30 Day Money Saving Challenges That Helped Me Save Money Fast + 4 Free Printables
Want to see how I am working towards saving $5,000 in just 5 months? These are the things I did to find ways to save money and start my own emergency savings fund!
Having an emergency fund is essential. It doesn’t have to be huge, but life happens and it is so much easier to deal with it when you are prepared! It took me a while to learn this and of course I learned the hard way – what other way is there?
When I finally decided to start saving I wanted to start small and save $250. Just to see if I could do it. I made up a daily challenge to put back a little bit of money every day. Then a few months later I did $500 then a few months after that I did $1,000. This month I am working on saving $250 again. But my goal is to try to save $3,000 a month!
I made these printables to make things a little more fun and to have something pretty I can hang up and cross off to see my progress.
How To Save $250 In 30 Days
I started with this $250 challenge.
I didn’t want to start with a large amount and not be able to do it. I wanted to do something that was not overwhelming.
I feel like saving when you don’t have a lot of extra income begins with finding a minimal place to stop spending so that you can save that money.
In this challenge – the largest amount you have to save is $15 a day. I thought, “okay I can do that! I spend that buying coffee every day” so I made the choice to make my coffee at home everyday instead of buying it at the coffee shop.
After doing that for a month it became a habit. Now I rarely, if ever, buy coffee out. I never really thought about how much those little things costed!
How To Save $500 In 30 Days
The next month I saved $500!
In this challenge the largest amount you have to save in a single day is $40. That’s a lot more than $15 – but I knew I had to find some other ways to stop spending so much while I was out and about.
It’s so easy to spend $10 here and $20 there and not think much of it.
For me, it was packing my own lunch so I didn’t eat out every day.
So between not buying coffee every morning and not going out for lunch I had that money to put in my savings account.
I do still eat out sometimes for lunch, but for the most part I make sure to bring my lunch to work.
How To Save $1,000 In 30 Days
When I really wanted to challenge myself to save $1,000 – it seemed like such a jump from the smaller amounts I had saved in the previous months.
So I made the spreadsheet and decided to have the most I would have to put back in a day $65 and that is only twice. I thought that would be my coffee, my lunch and not buying extra things at the gas station when getting gas (like a drink and chips or a lottery ticket).
I was pretty shocked when I actually saved the whole $1,000 without a problem. Completing the challenges has really showed me where I spend a lot on things that I don’t really need.
What I need is a vacation and now that I have saved $1,750 for my emergency fund and currently working on adding another $250 this month – I am going to go for the $3,000 next month!
How To Save $3,000 In 30 Days
For this challenge I had to really dig deep into where I was spending unnecessary money because this is a lot to save in a month.
The most I have to save in a day with this challenge is $200, is it a lot of money to put back in a day – yes. But I think I can do it if I am careful about my spending and find places that I can save without feeling completely broke!
I’m thinking those Target runs – where I go in for deodorant and come out with every thing in the store EXCEPT deodorant and the Walmart trips when I go in for toilet paper and come out with a receipt that says I spent $300…. Not my proudest moments – but it happens way too often.
So when I get started on this next month – I am going to try to create a new habit of carefully meal planning and making a list for the things I need and challenge myself to ONLY buy those things. No browsing. No picking up things that I absolutely do not need. Just thing things I have to have.
I keep telling myself when I finish this challenge I will have saved a total of $5,000 and I can finally take that vacation that I kept thinking I didn’t have enough money for and still have a decent amount of savings for when things happen in life, because we all know – they CAN and they DO!
I’m going to continue to do these saving challenges every month to see how much I can save throughout the year. Even if it is just $250 a month, that’s $250 that I probably would have spent on something else.
It’s funny how you don’t realize how much the little things that you buy add up until you do something like this! Challenge yourself to create new habits to save small amounts of money starting out. Starting small helped my find the places I would make changes easily. Then it grew to me realizing all the way I was spending money on things that I didn’t actually need. It’s a process, but it has been a life changing process for me.
I hope these printable challenges can help you do the things you really want to do – like taking that TRIP! And most importantly having a savings account to help you out when times get tough, your car needs mechanical work done or your hot water heater goes out!
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