Saving money is generally a key component of financial health, but it doesn’t always feel or sound that glamorous. This is where savings challenges and competitions come in-to make fun and engaging activities that turn what may have been tedious tasks of saving money into a rather exciting game or friendly competition. Savings challenges and competitions provide the impetus and framework needed to reach his or her goals, whether building an emergency fund, saving for a big purchase, or general improvement in financial health.
In this article, we will discuss a few savings challenges and competitions, explain the benefits of participating in such an activity, and provide some tips on how to participate in and run your own successfully. We’ll also take a closer look at how technology’s changing the savings challenge landscape and what the future may hold for this innovative approach to personal finance.
What Are Savings Challenges and Competitions?
Savings challenges and competitions are planned activities meant to woo or motivate people to save. They normally involve an amount to be saved and a time period and, many times, involve gamification and social interaction to keep participants engaged in the process.
These can be anything from simple, personal goals to gigantic, citywide competitions with thousands participating. Some are designed for individuals, while others are intended for couples, families, or whole communities. The key is that they all share the same goal: getting people to save more money in fun and engaging ways.
Types of Savings Challenges
The 52-Week Money Challenge
One of the trending savings challenges is the 52-Week Money Challenge. Here’s how it goes:
- You save $1 in week one.
- You save $2 in week two.
- Every week, you add an extra dollar to your savings.
- By week number 52, you will be saving $52.
This challenge, if you can do it, by year’s end you will have saved $1,378. That is one of the favorite challenges because it starts small and works its way up, allowing individuals more time to budget for this each month.
The 30-Day No-Spend Challenge
This is what I will refer to as the 30-Day No-Spend Challenge, and it is just about what it sounds like. You commit to not spending money on anything non-essential for 30 days, meaning you can’t eat out, buy any new clothes, or purchase items of entertainment.
That would be quite the eye-opener, as it may show one areas where he or she overspends needlessly and possibly saves upwards of hundreds of dollars in just one month. This is also an excellent way to break bad spending habits and reassess what one needs from what one wants.
The Spare Change Challenge
This is a simple challenge where you can save all your spare change or round up your purchases to the nearest dollar and save that difference. Most banks and a lot of financial apps now have an automatic round-up feature, which makes this even simpler than ever.
While it does not sound as if it is much to begin with, those tiny quantities rapidly build up; besides, that is a painless way to save because you are only setting aside money you likely wouldn’t miss anyway.
The $5 Bill Challenge
In this challenge, every time you get a $5 bill back as a feelchange, you put that $5 in savings. The challenge is effective because $5 is a good size to build up your savings account quickly but a small enough amount that you won’t be feeling like you’re giving up something worthwhile out of your pocket money.
The Pantry Challenge
The pantry challenge means eating exclusively what’s on hand in the pantry and freezer during a predetermined time, say a week or a month. This saves money at the grocery store but, often more importantly, prevents waste. It can be fun, as you are getting creative and using up items that perhaps get lost in the shuffle otherwise.
Benefits of Savings Challenges and Competitions
Motivation and Accountability
One of the greatest motivators is savings challenges and competitions. Once you turn it into some kind of game or competition, instantly savings become so much more interesting. The clear-cut goals and deadlines of such challenges will get you through, keeping you responsible and right on schedule.
Building Good Habits
Participating in savings challenges can teach you good financial habits that will go a long way even after the challenge is over. You might learn new ways to cut costs, understand the importance of saving first, or be more aware of impulsive spending.
Financial Education
A lot of savings challenges provide education for the participants on budgeting, or investment, and so on. Even without any formal educations, paying attention to one’s finances during a challenge can be a real teacher.
Community and Support
Most savings challenges have the social aspect where you can share your success and tips, as well as your struggles with others. The sense of community will no doubt provide the support and thus encouragement to stay on track with your goals.
Stress Reduction
For many people, financial stress is still largely a major problem. Engaging in certain savings goals through challenges and competitions could be an effective way of passing through such pressure while feeling in better control of your financial life.
How to Successfully Engage in Savings Challenges
Set Clear Goals
Before starting a savings challenge, know why you are saving. Having a goal for your savings – whether building an emergency fund or going on vacation – could also help keep you motivated.
Choose the Right Challenge
Savings challenges are not one-size-fits-all. Pick a challenge that works for your financial situation and lifestyle. Beginner savers should do a simple challenge such as the Spare Change Challenge before moving to more aggressive ones.
Plan Ahead
Some challenges require advance planning, like the No-Spend Challenge. Understand what you are getting yourself into and prepare in advance. This may be meal planning, cancelling subscriptions, or finding free entertainment.
Track Your Progress
Keep a tab on your savings throughout the challenge. As low tech as a spreadsheet, or as high tech as a savings app, often times seeing progress is just the thing a person needs to encourage themselves to continue.
Toast Small Successes
One of the key things that keeps people motivated to continue with a challenge is to be able to mark and celebrate small successes en route to your goal. Don’t wait until the end of the challenge, but make a note of and celebrate your progress along the way. It might simply be a case of treating yourself to a favorite (free) activity when you reach that milestone.
Learn from Setbacks
Slipping up on a challenge doesn’t have to mean giving up. Instead, use it as an opportunity for learning about what triggered the setback and how you will avoid finding yourself in that position again sometime later.
Creating Your Savings Challenge
While there are many popular savings challenges out there, creating your own can be a fun and effective way to meet those particular financial goals. Here’s how to do it:
Identify Your Goal
First, decide what you are saving for and how much you need to save. That will help you define the boundaries of your challenge.
Set a Timeframe
Decide on the length of your challenge. This can be for a month, a year, or however long makes sense to meet your goal.
Plan Your Rules
Set concrete, achievable rules for your challenge. Such rules can include a specific dollar amount saved per day, expenses to give up, or other creative ways to earn to save extra money.
Add Fun
Consider how you might make your challenge fun: perhaps it is by charting a visual of your progress, by setting mini-rewards along the way, or by engaging a friend or family member.
Plan for Accountability
Decide how you will be holding yourself accountable. This could be posting on social media about the challenge, getting a buddy to join you in it, or using an app to track.
Technology has completely changed the way that we tackle savings challenges and competitions. So, how does tech make it easier and more fun to save? Well, for starters, a few of the ways include:
Savings Apps
A number of apps now exist specifically for savings challenges that are able to automate savings, track progress, and even offer encouraging words toward the goal.
This, of course, has made the Spare Change Challenge pretty painless as most banks and financial apps make the round-up feature available.
Virtual Competitions
These websites also allow you to create virtual savings competitions with anyone from around the world. Such online challenges can offer a sense of community and healthy competition that will help keep you motivated.
AI-Powered Savings
Some apps now use AI to analyze your spending habits and automatically save money on your behalf. This makes savings quite “painless.” These “smart” saving tools go the extra mile in making saving feel effortless.
Future of Savings Challenges and Competitions
As technology continues to get more advanced, expect even more innovative approaches to Savings Challenges and Competitions. Following are some trends to watch out for:
Gamification
We will continue to see more saving apps and challenges incorporating gamification elements, such as levels, achievements, and virtual rewards.
Virtual Reality
Through Virtual Reality, immersive saving experiences can be enabled in which participants track their progress in an exciting new way.
Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
While cryptocurrencies are now considered closer to mainstream thought, it’s not beyond one’s imagination that over time, digital money savings challenges or using the blockchain for tracking and verification purposes might become a reality.
Personalised Challenges
AI can help, given the person’s spending history and income and financial goals of the individual, provide highly customized savings challenges.
Conclusion
Savings challenges and competitions are a fun, interactive method of building improvement with regards to your financial health. Whether you’re taking part in any one of the popular challenges-like the 52-Week Money Challenge-or devising your very own personalized savings game, these activities will help you instill good financial habits that will serve you well toward your savings goals and maybe even have a little fun while you’re at it.
With any other savings challenges, the key to success lies in getting one that fits your lifestyle and financial situation; if need be, start small and never be afraid to edit the rules according to your specific needs, so this works for you, not against you. You will be surprised at how much, with consistency and dedication, you will manage to save.
But as technology keeps on getting better, we’re seeing the ways to save money getting even more innovative and fun. Regardless of what tool or challenge you employ, the most important thing is to make saving a regular part of your financial routine.
Why not give one of the above savings challenges a shot? Your future self-and your bank account-will thank you!
