7 Savings Challenges to Boost Your Bank Balance

Saving money requires discipline, planning, and a well-thought-out strategy to be sustainable over a long period. However, knowing where to start can be the most challenging part for some savers.

Several savings challenges offer a fun, guided way to start saving money and build financial habits to last a lifetime. Finding the right challenge could help you develop better saving habits today.

This article will cover seven savings challenges that offer fun ways to help you develop healthy savings habits and set aside money for the future.

Here are seven savings challenges you could try to create new savings habits:

1. The $1 Challenge - Save $365 in a Year
The $1 challenge involves saving just $1 daily for an entire year. At the end of the year, you will have saved $365.

Although the $1 challenge does not lead to a large amount of savings, it offers a way to build savings habits without noticing a significant impact on your daily finances. This could work well for those new to money-saving strategies.

2. The 52-Week Money Challenge
The 52-week money challenge entails increasing your savings increment by $1 every week.

In the first week of the year, you save $1. In the second week, you save $2. This pattern continues until the fifty-second week of the year when you save $52 in a week. Overall, you will have saved $1,378.

This method lets you start small and strengthen your savings habits over time while helping you build more savings than the $1 challenge.

3. The 26-Week Savings Challenge
The 26-week savings challenge works like the 52-week challenge but in half the time. However, you don’t have to start with $1 if you want to challenge yourself to save even more money.

For example, you could start by saving $3 in the first week, then $6 in the second week, and so on until you save $78 in week 26. This would total $1,053 in savings over half a year.

4. The No-Spend Savings Challenge

The no-spend challenge has you reduce your spending on extra or unwanted costs. You could either set a goal for a specific timeframe or for how many days in a year you will not spend money on nonessential items. For example, you may skip buying a coffee before work once or twice a week or reduce the number of times you eat out in a month.

This challenge helps you build the habit of saving, encourages a leaner budget, and simplifies your lifestyle.

5. The Financial Minimalist Challenge
If you want to push yourself, this challenge is a step up from the no-spend challenge. Rather than crafting a short-term goal to reduce spending, the financial minimalist challenge involves removing all spending but necessities for at least several months.

The immediate result could be extra savings. However, in the long term, this challenge helps you re-evaluate your lifestyle and could lead to spending more intentionally on things you value.

6. The 1% Retirement Challenge

Retirement might seem like a daunting savings goal. The 1% retirement challenge helps break retirement saving down into more manageable and actionable goals. You start with however much you plan to save for retirement the first year, then increase the amount you save for retirement by 1% each year.

By gradually raising the portion of income that goes to retirement, you could boost your retirement fund and speed up your progress without an outsized impact on your current lifestyle.

This challenge could become easier as your income rises, so long as you maintain a similar level of spending. Spending should make up a smaller percentage of your budget when you earn more, meaning you have more for retirement.

7. The Round-Up Challenge

The round-up challenge leverages your “spare change” for savings. Every time you make a purchase, round up the total amount to the next dollar and save the difference.

For example, imagine you buy lunch for $10.45. Rounding that up brings you to $11. The difference between $11 and $10.45 is $0.55. You’d put this $0.55 in your savings. To simplify this challenge, you can track your round-ups throughout the month and make one monthly transfer for your cumulative round-up savings.

The round-up challenge could be effective for people who frequently make purchases with a credit or debit card. It could also encourage less spending since you become more aware of your spending habits. As a result of less spending, you have more money left each month anyway, meaning this challenge could help you save in two different ways.