3 tips on how to succeed at the 52-week money challenge

Valuable tips and tricks for doing the 52-week savings challenge. Find easy hacks for your New Year’s savings plan in our blog. 

A lot of people have trouble saving money: some lack the discipline to do it, some people simply forget to set money aside, while others don’t have enough motivation. No matter what your savings goals are and what prevents you from achieving them, savings challenges can be a great tool to help you reach your goals without giving up early. One of the most popular money savings challenges is the 52-week challenge.

What is the 52-week savings challenge?

The 52-week money saving challenge is a challenge where a person saves an increasing amount of money every week. During the first week of the challenge, you save 1 dollar, 2 dollars during the second week and so on until the last week, during which you save 52 dollars. The challenge lasts for 52 weeks, which adds up to one year, and it’s common to start it at the beginning of a new year on 1 January, but you can start the challenge at any time. After the challenge, you will have $1,378 dollars saved. 

Tips for the 52-week money challenge

Cross off weeks in a random order 

The main problem with the 52-week money saving challenge is that it gets pretty expensive towards the end of the year. One of the easiest ways to modify this challenge to ease the burden on your wallet is to print out a chart with all 52 weeks and cross off the weeks in an order that works for you. For instance, if you get a bonus at work sometime during the year, you can save 52 dollars during that week instead of leaving it for the last week of December. Similarly, if you’re tight on cash during a certain week, you can save one or two dollars then so you won’t feel like you’re failing at the challenge. 

Set up automatic contributions for the dollar a week challenge

One of the easiest ways to make sure you stick to your savings plan is to make the contributions automatic. You can use your online or mobile banking to set up automatic transfers into a separate savings account every week on a certain day. This way you won’t accidentally spend the money or forget to set it aside and you can simply watch the sum in your savings account grow without you even doing anything. 

Set money aside monthly instead of doing the 52-week challenge

If your main goal is to save about $1,400 in a year and improve your financial discipline and not to complete the 52-week challenge, you can modify the challenge to make it easier on your day-to-day finances. All you need to do is set aside $100 in the first month of the challenge and then increase that sum by $5 every month. At the end of the year, you’ll have saved $1,530. Alternatively, you can increase the amount by $10 every month and have the final sum of $1,860 at the end of the year.