Have any of you heard of the 52 week savings challenge? You basically make a chart out and label it 1 through 52 to account for the weeks of the year and pick a day of the week that you are going to deposit money into some sort of savings account. You then put in the amount of money for the week you are on. You start out week one by putting 1 dollar into your account and so on until you reach week 52. At the end of the year, you will have $1378 in savings plus the interest you earned over the year. You could even start out high at $52, and work your way down if that works better with your finances. I am on week 7 now and so far so good.
We have that program when I was in grade school. There was a bank called Banco Filipino that gave the privilege of a children's saving's account that has no minimum balance and an initial deposit of 1 peso. It was a great idea because almost all the students in our school have opened a savings account. And even when I was already an adult, I would still save money in the bank. But at home, I have my own secret banks like an empty jar, an empty bottle or anything that can accommodate coins and paper bills. Not to brag but last year, I had to count my savings for depositing to my bank account. In the 10 years of savings, I had a total of 70,000 pesos, that's around $2,000.
Yes, I first heard of the 52 week challenge a few years ago via one of my forums. I really liked the idea and always intended to give it a go, but then I never really get round to doing it. I think when I first heard of it, because I was struggling to find work and money was extra tight, I was discouraged from starting because I didn't want to run out of steam half way through it. But now I'm in a better position financially, it's definitely something worth considering for the future
I haven't heard of this yet but I somehow do something similar with this. Whenever we received an income, we partition it into different percentage depending of their uses. Like for example, we partition 30% for expenses and 10% for the tithes, 20% for the savings and so on. That way, our money will be organized and will likely prevent us from overspending.
