Have you seen the meme going around about numbering 100 envelopes from 1 to 100? They tend to finish with “in a year you will have saved $5,050”!
As much as I love gamifying savings, what the examples I have seen seem to forget that is that not everyone has an extra $97 available each week (on average) to put in an envelope.
50-80% of US households (and it seems to be similar worldwide) are living paycheck-to-paycheck in 2020.
25% of households making over $150,000 annually are living paycheck-to-paycheck.
If this is you, here are a few ideas:
– for every dollar you spend on a treat (coffee, eating out, chocolate, whatever), put a dollar in an envelope
– move 1% of every dollar you deposit in your checking account to your savings account
– put anything left over from your weekly or monthly budgeted amounts for groceries, gas, etc, in an envelope for savings
– figure out what things in your current budget you can live without and put that amount into savings
– make a friendly wager with a spouse/friend/child to see who can reach their savings goal first
– use that same idea, but make the amounts smaller, with the total being $500 or 1,000 (most people do not even have $500 available for emergencies)
Can you think of any other ideas?