Savings tips for small budgets
Welcome to Day Six of the Micro Saving Challenge.
Are you overwhelmed at the thought of having to save money? This is the guide to savings tips for small budgets.
This challenge isn’t about making you rich overnight. It is meant to be a plan which uses small, baby steps to help you reach your saving goal one day at a time. I am going to focus on what can be done in just under three months. If I can do this for three months I know that I will find it motivating to move to a six-month goal and so on.
I am going to post a new entry each day talking about the challenges I have faced and the small changes I have made to get to my money-saving goal.
As we lockdown 2.0 looms on us in the UK I am conscious that there is a lot of uncertainty out there for many of us. I will keep posting my daily challenges. If you can join in please do. Even if you can only make a couple of changes it will all help. Remember that our Micro Saving challenge is full of savings tips for small budgets.
Step One
If you are just joining us and have missed the instructions from Day one, you can access them here.
Before we get started on day six’s challenge, make sure you have banked your 11-week challenge money. We are on the 21st day of saving. Challenge one should have £14.28 banked, challenge two £58.59, and challenge three £62.79.
As a reminder here is what you should be able to bank by December 31st by following this step alone: challenge one saves £30, challenge two saves £155, and challenge three saves £255. Pick a challenge which works for you and stick with it.
Remember to keep a track of what you have banked. The numbers today might seem small but I want you to remember this is a day by day challenge. It is not meant to change your bank balance over night however it is meant to show you that with a few small changes you can achieve big things.
Step Two
Before we get started with today’s challenge lets recap the challenge from day five.
Your challenge was to do some housekeeping on your bank account. If you missed the instructions they are here.
Hopefully you have managed to find some direct debits or standing orders which might not be needed anymore.
I managed to cancel an unnecessary subscription and have a list of bills to renegotiate. The first one on the list for me will be to cancel my contact lens subscription and switch to a cheaper pay as you go option. This should save me over £10 per month. That’s £120 across the year I could save.
After all of your hard work identifying these unnecessary payments it is important that you don’t just waste the money you save. Once you have cancelled the payments make sure you setup a standing payment to move the same amount of money each month to your savings account.
Step Three
With lockdown looming this challenge should be easy. I want you to target yourself to have some ‘non spending’ days.
That is don’t spend any money unless it is absolutely necessary.
If you are a shopaholic and think you will struggle with this the idea is that there are no impulse buys, no takeaways and no treats. Remember you are trying to reach your savings goal so you are trying to do everything you can to reach it.
A quick win would be to ‘bank’ any money you have saved from something being cancelled because of lockdown. I will be banking the money I would have spent on my haircut for example.
Step Four
Make sure you keep track of what you find. It is important to see how the small amounts are adding up to something much bigger.
Step Five
Remember we aren’t trying to become millionaires over night. This challenge is about reaching the small goal we set for ourselves by 31st December. If you think you can reach your goal with a lesser salary saving then do it, otherwise try and save even a small amount for the next three months.
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