Best Money Saving Hacks To Help You Stick To Your Budget

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If you’re looking for new and exciting ways to stick to your budget as the festive season approaches, or want to kick off 2022 with your finances in order, then look no further. 

We’ve put together a list of the best money saving hacks and challenges to help incentivise your savings.

Whether you’re aiming to save a few hundred or even a few thousand, there’s a rule here for everyone!

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The great thing about the twelve month rule is that it’s one of the few saving challenges that requires little maintenance as you’ll only need to set your cash aside once a month. If you haven’t yet come up with a good new year's resolution, then you might want to keep this in mind as an option! 

The rule is as follows: you take each month as a number, i.e. January would be month 1, and multiply that number by 10 to figure out how much you need to save. This means you’ll be saving £10 in January, £20 in February and so on until you're saving £120 in December.

In total, the twelve month rule will save you a whopping £780 a year.

The fiver challenge, otherwise known as the £5 note challenge, takes a fun and laid back approach to saving. All it requires you to do is set aside every £5 note you come across. 

There’s no specific time limit for this challenge - you might decide to keep a special £5 note jar and count your savings once the jar is full, or set yourself a specific time frame to see how much you could save over a 6 month or 12 month period.

This challenge is a great option for those who are more comfortable setting aside smaller amounts of cash every so often, rather than committing to saving large amounts on a regular basis.

Having a designated ‘spare change jar’ is a smart money saving hack that every household should adopt. 

Whenever you receive any change whilst shopping, or stumble upon loose change in your bags, pockets or around the house, it should go straight into the spare change jar.

If you’re able to maintain this for an entire year, you’ll be surprised at just how much it could save you all together. Once your jar is full, you can take it to your nearest coin-counting machine to convert your savings into banknotes.

This hack can be done independently, but it’s also a great option for families. Suppose you wanted to save towards a family holiday - having a spare change jar would be a great incentive for the family to work together to ensure you’re all saving every bit of loose change you come across!

Budgeting shouldn’t have to be boring or feel like a burden. To spice things up, consider a game of Budgeting Bingo. 

Here’s how it works: Find a pre-made bingo savings chart of 30 squares containing random numbers that add up to a total saving amount of your choosing (there’s a tonne on google). 

Every day for a month, you’ll choose a square in your calendar, save that amount and then cross it off. By the end of the month, you’ll have crossed off every amount and achieved your saving goal. 

This money saving hack may be unrealistic to perform on a monthly basis, so we’d recommend doing it either bi-monthly or twice a year, depending on what you feel most comfortable with!

The 100 envelope challenge first rose to fame on TikTok after a demonstration video went viral explaining how the hack could save you a whopping £5,000 in just one year. 

To take part in this challenge, you’ll need to label 100 envelopes with the numbers 1-100. Then, every week you’ll choose two envelopes at random and put the amount of money written on the envelopes inside. 

This money saving hack may require you to save larger amounts on a regular basis, so for a less challenging version, you could aim for 50 envelopes over a 6 month period.

Last but certainly not least, our personal budgeting app Budget by Koody is an excellent money management tool to kickstart your journey towards budgeting and saving. It’s the only UK-based app of its kind that allows you to manually input and track your past, current and future expenses in as much detail as you’d like without needing to connect to your bank account.

You can use Budget by Koody to set budgets, track spending, set savings goals, access a range of learning resources and more!

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See: 10 ideas to reduce your energy bills

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