Kickstart your savings with these easy challenges

If you’re after some inspiration to save more in 2021, I’ve rounded up a few simple savings challenges you could start this year! 👊

💰 The Round-Up Challenge. If you find saving difficult to do, why not start by rounding up everyday purchases? For example, if you spend £12.20 at the supermarket, round it up to £13 and put the 80p into a savings pot. Without even trying you can build a tidy sum. There are lots of apps that help you do this – I like Moneybox, Monzo and Plum.

💰 The 52-week Saving Challenge. With this challenge you start off small and work your way up. In the first week, you just have to save £1, the second week £2 and so on, until the last week when you save £52. Do this and you should have £1,378 in the end! If you want to up the ante you could always add a zero or double the payments so it’s £2 in the first week, £4 in the second etc.

💰 No Spend Challenge. This challenge seems it was made for lockdown! Set yourself the challenge of not spending anything for a set number of days. If you want, you can exclude bills and make it only about discretionary purchases. You might be surprised at how into it you get! If you’re feeling competitive try this out with a friend or partner.

💰 365 Day Penny Challenge. This is a similar concept to the 52-week challenge but instead a daily game with a lower target. Put simply, you save pennies to match the day. So on day one you save 1p, day two 2p and so on. At the end, you should have collected £667. Easy peasy!

💰 The Coffee Break or Give Something Up Challenge. This might be a cliché but that’s because it works. It’s amazing how quickly small spends can add up – for example, a daily coffee spend (although maybe we all need our daily coffee right now). So all you need to do is swap your indulgence for a home-made version and bank the money instead. I like using MSE’s Demotivator. It lets you plug in your ‘vice’ and see how much you’d save over the year if you gave it up. For an added saving element if you do cave and get the said vice, you could fine yourself and put that fine into your savings pot.

💰 MoneySaving Bingo. If you want to turn saving into a game this is a great one – you could even involve the kids if they get pocket money. All you need to do is print off a bingo card (or make one yourself) and every day pick off a number to add to your savings pot, until you’ve crossed off the numbers. You then get to shout Bingo!

💰 The Virtual Envelope Challenge. The Envelope Challenge has been doing the rounds on TikTok. The concept is you take 100 envelopes and mark them 1 to 100. Then every week pick two envelopes at random to put away the same amount in cash. Now I’m not a huge fan of carrying lots of cash so I suggest you keep the concept but do it virtually!

💰 The Receipt Savings Challenge. Quite often at the bottom of a receipt you’ll see a little savings amount from any multi-buys or deals you made use of. Instead of just forgetting about this, transfer the same amount into your savings pot straight away. I think you’ll be amazed at how quickly it adds up and it will motivate you to hunt down those bargains even more.

Where to put your savings

Savings rates are not the best at the moment but here are some options:

• 1.25% from Chip. It’s currently offering 1.25% for balances up to £5,000 which smashes other accounts. Usually you need a friend to refer you to get the 1.25% interest rate but I've bagged you a code. New customers to Chip just need to download the app and sign up via this Chip* link and use the VIP code SNOOP21 💪 For all the details including savings safety, check out my dedicated Snoop in your feed.
• Get 0.55% in the best easy access account. For the best easy access rates, visit Moneyfacts to check the latest rates available

I hope these help give your saving habit a kickstart this year! 👍

*When you click on this link we get paid a small fee which helps us to keep developing Snoop. This doesn't affect the price you pay or our opinion in any way.