If you could accomplish anything in 2018, what would be? For most of us our answer might involve money in some way. From having less debt, to making more money, having more saved, budget better, whatever it might be. Money is a huge focus for many of us. There never seems to be enough to go around and when it rains, it pours – am I right? This year, I want to help you save more money for those rainy days or for those days where you just want to have a little fun. 

Last year, I introduced the 52 Week Savings Challenge and it was a huge hit. Our family really benefited from taking simple steps to put more money into savings. So, I wanted to start 2018 off with a bang and bring back the 52 week savings challenge.

Now remember this savings challenge is above and beyond what you’re currently budgeting for. This money either needs to come from your grocery budget, your eating out category or a combination of any budget categories. We don’t want to take away from what you’re currently putting aside for your emergency fund or your debt payments.

Last year when we decided to do this challenge, we looked at our budget and realized it wouldn’t hurt to have an extra $1,300 in the bank by the end of the year.

We created an easy-to-follow 52 Week Savings Challenge. It’s easy to follow and you can really tackle it any way you want.

Here’s the gist of the savings challenge:

Start off with saving $1 the first week, then add $1 every week to you new goal. Here’s what it looks like for the whole year:

week 1 – $1, total of $1
week 2 – $2, total of $3
week 3 – $3, total of $6
…
…
week 52 – $52, total of $1,378

I created an easy PDF for you to download to keep track. You can download this free printable here.

Here’s another way to tackle this 52 week savings challenge:

You can start with week 52 and work your way backwards. That way you’re starting with savings $52, $51, $50 and so on then when it’s closer to the holidays your savings would be less than $10 a week. It’s up to you.

Just decide which way is best for your family and get started.

What are you going to do with this extra savings at the end of the year? It’s going to be good to use towards Christmas gifts or you can add it to your emergency fund or even debt! Whatever you want to do with it, it’s up to you!

Just think, $1,378 can be yours by saving a few dollars each month for the next 12 months. So easy!

Need More Help?

If you’re looking for a great tool to help keep your family on budget, then check out out my budget spreadsheet.  Each month is laid out right in front of you where you can keep track of what you budget and what you actually spend. Now you’ll know in real time how you’re doing each month.

I’ll be the first to admit I will probably date a few documents with 2017 for the next few weeks until I can get the hang of it. No matter how many times I repeat to myself “2018, 2018, 2018” I still end up dating with the wrong year. This will go on for most of January, which it does every year. At this point, I’ve just accepted it. 

This time of year J and I sit down for our quarterly planning meeting to plan the next few months in advance. Planning the next three months out is one of the biggest YES things we’ve ever done. We don’t plan out each day in detail, but we make sure to plan out any out of town trips we need to make to visit family, birthday gifts we need to buy, any bigger purchases that are coming up (like car maintenance, home repairs, etc.).  This planning helps us make sure our budget is right and makes sure that we’re on the same page. 

So before you get too much further into 2018 (I know, today is only day one), make sure to sit down with your significant other and have a calendar in front of you. We use our Google calendar to organize our entire lives. We each have our own calendar and then we have a joint one that we can both see. Whenever I have an out of town conference or he has a late class then we can put it on our joint calendar so we both know about it. I don’t necessarily put my doctor appointments and client appointments on our joint calendar because they don’t affect him. 

This planning also works great for when we’re out with family and friends. If we want to schedule a dinner out or a weekend visit, then we just look at the joint calendar. If that day or time is open then go ahead and schedule. It’s an unwritten rule in our house that when it comes to family and friends, we like to do whatever we can to be there. So if there isn’t anything scheduled, then mark it down. Whatever is on the calendar is something we’ve committed to and that means a lot to us.

After we have our planning meeting, we also like to talk about goals for the new year.  What do you like most about a new year? I love the idea of new beginnings, which means new goals and new successes. For me, I love creating action steps to help reach our goals. Now J has his goals, I have my goals and then we have family goals.  We like to think of our family goals as the driving force behind our decisions. 

This year our word is simplicity. What can we do in our day-to-day lives that can help simplify everything? For us, it means saying no to more and saying yes to what we actually want to do.  It also means making sure our budget tracking is easy to maintain and encourages us to stay on top of it.  That’s why we created the easiest budget template because we wanted something easy.  We wanted something that didn’t take hours to fill out each month and something that told us exactly how we were doing with our money.

I won’t share J’s goals with you because he didn’t sign up to be a blogger like I did.  But I will show you my personal goals and some of our family goals.  It’s funny that some of mine and J’s goals and our family’s goals are pretty much the same.  I think that’s the price you pay when you become a parent – you’re sole focus is the family.

As you can see most of my ‘personal’ goals involve my family. The ones that are left involve my blog or my day job as a financial specialist.  To me – building those goals will help me reach our family goals because we will be able to provide more for our son.

What are your goals for the upcoming year? Try to keep them short, sweet and to the point. Don’t put too many details in your annual goals because then it makes it harder to achieve.  What we like to do is take our bigger goals and then break them down into smaller ones.  That way we can focus on one thing at a time and measure our success.  If you’re curious, you can check out last year’s here.