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Savings Challenges that Have a BIG Impact | Tight Budget Tips | Saving Hacks - YouTube
Channel: The Budget Mom
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- Welcome to The Budget
Mom YouTube channel.
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I'm Kumiko Love from TheBudgetMom.com.
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Today we're talking about
a really fun subject.
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We're gonna be talking
about savings challenges,
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and not just ordinary savings challenges,
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but savings challenges that
are geared for smaller incomes
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and tighter budgets.
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(cheerful acoustic music)
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So the reason I wanted to do this video
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is because creating and
implementing savings challenges
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in my life has no, like I have no doubt
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that has led to a lot of my success
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when it comes to saving money,
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but not just with the
numbers and the values.
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It also helped me establish
a habit of savings.
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Now, I know a lot of the time
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when we think about saving money,
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we think about being able to save,
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you know, the most amount, the
biggest amount that we can,
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but that's really not
the benefit of savings.
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The benefit of savings is establishing
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a consistent habit in our lives to save,
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which then leads to us making saving
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a priority in our lives,
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which then leads to making savings
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a priority in our budgets,
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and that's our ultimate goal.
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So today we're gonna be talking about
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some savings challenges
that I have implemented
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throughout my life that in
the beginning of my journey
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was what I could afford to do.
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Now most people are under the impression
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if they have a really tight budget
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or they're working with a small income
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that they don't have the
capability, opportunity to save.
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And after kinda working
through this in my journey,
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my financial journey, I know
that's just not the case.
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So it's all about one:
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looking at where your dollars are going
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so you can find more discretionary
income in your budget
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to throw at things that matter to you.
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And sometimes that's our
savings goals, or it's debt.
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Now, keep in mind these savings challenges
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don't just have to go
towards savings goals.
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You can also use them to pay off debt
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and hit your debt goals as well.
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So we're gonna be talking about
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a couple of savings challenges.
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One is the $5 savings challenge
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that I'm currently on right now.
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I, yes, I am doing this
in my life right now
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even though my financial
situation has changed drastically
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over the last nine years.
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We're gonna be talking about
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the $300 12-Week Christmas
Savings Challenge,
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the 52-Week Savings Challenge
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that I have kinda tweaked
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to make it work for smaller budgets.
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And we're also gonna be talking about
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the Save the Change Challenge.
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So the first challenge I
want to talk about today
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is the $5 Challenge.
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Now the $5 Challenge is essentially
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saving every $5 that you come
across in a certain timeframe.
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Now, according to my trackers,
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I started this savings challenge
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in the middle of December of
2019, and I'm still goin'.
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My challenge to myself was to do this
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all the way through 2020.
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Now, this is a challenge
that is definitely
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I think geared towards
being an all-cash spender
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because you're saving $5 bills
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that you're coming across
throughout your challenge period.
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However, I also think it could work
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even if you don't, aren't
an all-cash spender.
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Maybe you get money for birthdays.
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Maybe you get money for different things
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that pop up throughout your life.
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It doesn't have to be a lot.
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It could just be a simple
challenge of saying,
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hey, when I see a $5
bill, I'm gonna save it.
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Now let's talk about the resources I use
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to complete this challenge.
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Every single thing,
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all the printables and
worksheets that you're seein'
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in today's video are available
in my free resource library.
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Yes, I'm giving them all to you for free.
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I wanna make sure that you
have the resources available
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to not only make these challenges fun,
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I want you to be able to see the progress.
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I want you to finally see
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that small action steps
still lead up to success
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and they still add up in big ways.
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So I have currently
saved $470 in $5 bills.
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Now I use a jar that looks like this.
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I got this jar from Amazon,
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and I'll link it in the
description of the video.
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This is just a chalk label.
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I just use a chalk marker for my jar.
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But the cool thing about this jar
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is there's no openings except for the top.
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You actually have to
break into this sucker
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when you're done.
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And for me, I thought that was really cool
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because I'm the type
of person that's like,
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oh, I'm gonna stop by McDonald's
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and get myself a Diet Coke and a Big Mac.
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I'll just take some of my fives out.
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I can't access these
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until I'm completely
done with the challenge.
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Now for me, that helps me.
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Maybe you might not like the idea
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of having to break a
jar to get to your cash.
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Any jar will do.
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Do you have a Mason jar
laying around your home?
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Maybe you have a food container, a jar,
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a pickle jar container.
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It could be anything,
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a dedicated space to save your $5 bills.
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This is the $5 Challenge.
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You can get the $5 Challenge Tracker
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in the free resource library.
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The next savings challenge
I wanna talk about
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is the Save the Change Challenge.
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I have been doing this
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since the very beginning of my journey,
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almost nine years ago,
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and I've continued to
do it every single year.
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And there's a couple of reasons why.
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Let's talk about why,
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first,, why I started
implementing this into my life.
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When I first started budgeting,
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I had barely enough money
after paying my bills
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for gas and food for my son.
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But at the same time,
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I had an internal struggle as a mom
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to want to save for my son's future.
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And for me, that looked
like college savings.
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So I started thinking of ways,
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how can I still take
action even in a small way
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to take care of some
of this underlying pull
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and feeling to take action on
saving for my son's future?
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So I started looking for ways in my budget
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on how I could make it work
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without actually changing my budget,
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without changing any numbers in my budget,
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and I thought using my spare change.
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Every single year, I
save all of my change.
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Now, of course, as an all-cash spender,
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I get a lot of change.
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I save them in little counting
jars that look like this.
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And I got these ones from Amazon,
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and you can see I turned it on.
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I have $46.93 cents in this jar.
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This is why I love the counting jars.
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Remember how I said in the
beginning of this video,
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I'm all about seeing your progress?
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I didn't want to just throw money in a jar
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and not have any clue on how much I saved.
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I wanna see that number grow.
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So how this jar works
is you literally put in,
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so I have a nickel,
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it counts the change for
you as you put it in.
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So what I do, just for making it easy,
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and sometimes I don't have the time
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to stick the money in the jar.
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I throw all of my change
into this clear glass bowl.
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And once every week I put it into my jar.
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Now that's what works
for me and my schedule.
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Maybe every day you
want to add to your jar,
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and that's completely okay.
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Now this is a perfect example
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of how saving small amounts
can add up, but not only that,
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it can give us peace of mind
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and ease our hearts a little bit
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knowing we're taking
small action on a goal
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that we may not be able to make a priority
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right now in our lives.
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Every year I save my change,
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and in November I bring all my change
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down to my credit union.
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I make a deposit into my checking account,
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and I write a check for his
529 College Savings Account.
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Every year I'm able to
do anywhere between 250
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and $400 extra on top of what
I already do within my budget
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for his college fund.
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And if you're working with a
really, really tight budget
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where you feel like you have no extra room
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to pursue the things that you want to,
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which it might be a want,
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it might be saving for
a new purse you want.
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It might be saving for
some new basketball shoes
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for your kiddo.
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This will help with that.
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So this is the Save the Change Challenge.
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Let's talk about the $300
12-Week Christmas Challenge.
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Have you ever gotten close to Christmas,
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you know, a couple of
months out from Christmas
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and you're like, oh my
gosh, I don't feel like
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I have enough saved,
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or I'm not fully prepared
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for what's about to hit me?
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Especially 'cause around Christmas,
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we're hit with so many
things like Cyber Monday
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and Black Friday.
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Maybe you have your Christmas
savings already saved up,
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but you're thinking, you know what?
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There's some things that I want
to get during Black Friday.
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You can use this challenge
for this as well.
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The great thing about this challenge
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is it only takes 12 weeks,
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so if you get really close to Christmas
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and you still feel like
you need to save more
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or haven't started saving,
you want something saved,
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his is a great challenge.
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The other great challenge
is it's not asking you
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to completely deplete
your income doing it.
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So what it is is every single
week, there's 12 weeks,
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you're gonna save a certain dollar amount.
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Do you notice these dollar
amounts are very doable?
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All of us can say,
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hey, let's decrease
our food budget by $25,
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or it can be another
category in our budget
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that we can challenge
ourselves to decrease one month
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to get that $25.
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Now the amounts fluctuate every week.
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You can see on week one, saving $25.
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Week two is saving $20.
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Maybe you sell some clothes
that you no longer need or use,
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and you wanna use that for this challenge.
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That's fine as well, but
the amounts are very small.
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It's not like it's a hundred, $200 a week.
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Every single time you
complete week, the weeks,
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you would just check off the box.
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At the end of the 12 weeks,
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you will have $300 to use
towards that Christmas spending.
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This worksheet is available
in the free resource library.
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And like I said,
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I'll put a link to this in
the description of the video.
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The next savings challenge
I wanna talk about
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is the 52-Week Money Saving Challenge.
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Now, if you look this up on Google,
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this savings challenge probably has
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a hundred different variations.
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So I created my own
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that does really well
with working with smaller
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or tighter budgets.
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So week one, it's gonna be a lot like
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our Christmas Savings Challenge,
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but in week one, we're gonna save $1.
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That's gonna give you a balance of $1.
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You check off the box
when that's complete.
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On week two, you're going to save $2,
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giving you a balance of $3.
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You check that off, you're done,
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and you go all the way down.
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Now with this savings challenge,
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the money you are saving is the same
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as the corresponding week
that you're completing.
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Do you see on week 10, you're saving $10?
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Week 20, you're saving $20,
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and so on all the way down.
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At the end of a year, okay,
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after 52 weeks, you're
gonna have $1,378 saved.
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Now for some people, they're like,
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man for a full year,
that's not very much money,
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but you know what?
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To a lot of people, that's a lot of money.
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And I know in the beginning of my journey,
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that was a small trip with my son.
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Even if it was just a small
weekend trip to go fishing
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and maybe do one night of camping.
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This was also a great emergency fund.
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So the 1,378, it's making something
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out of really small amounts.
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So this is the 52-Week
Money Saving Challenge.
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So those are my four savings challenges
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that you can start today
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if you are working with
a small or tight budget,
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if you found this video
helpful, please like it,
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and don't forget to subscribe.
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(upbeat keyboard music)
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Dang. Hold on, okay.
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I'm gonna get...okay.
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Okay, let's do the beginning, okay.
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(upbeat keyboard music)
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