SAVING money can be hard, but there are some easy tricks which can help you put money aside.
One woman said she is doing the “100 envelopes challenge” in 2026, and it leaves you with £5,0.50 in just 100 days.
Taking to her @sundaze.savings account, she shared how, like the name suggests, you need to find 100 envelopes for the task.
Admitting that one of her New Year’s resolutions is to “save as much money as possible”, she explained: “This is very similar to some I’ve done in the past where I use the binder.
“I wanted to switch it up a little bit, so I got these fun, colourful envelopes instead.
“I’m gonna label all the envelopes one through 100, and in the end, this will add up to £5,050.”
After writing the numbers on the envelopes, she then shuffles them so she doesn’t know what order they will come up in.
She then explained that as you pull out an envelope, you have to put in the cash that it says on the front.
This means that you could get as low as £1, but this goes all the way up to £100.
The saver continued: “My plan for this challenge is to grab a couple of envelopes every couple of days and just stuff.
“I would really love to have this challenge done by the end of March, so that’s our goal.
“The cool thing about these envelopes, too, is that once I put the money in, it is sealed.
“So unless I want to tear open the envelope and ruin this challenge, there’s no way for me to just pull money out.
“Once this challenge is complete and I’ve saved the £5,050, I’m gonna put it directly into my high yield savings account.”
Her video has racked up over 127,000 likes, and many people were highly impressed with the idea.
One person wrote: “I’m definitely doing this gonna get my envelopes today, thank you.”
Another added: “I love this sooo much.”
And a third commented: “I did this & am doing it an again this yr. I was able to save enough to put down payments on all my vendors for my wedding next yr.”
It’s not the only saving challenge that you can try.
1p saving challenge
If your budget is tight after the festive season, the 1p savings challenge is the perfect way to ease yourself into saving without feeling the pinch.
You start by saving just a single penny on day one, and then you simply increase the amount you save by another penny every single day.
This means on day one you save 1p, on day two you put aside 2p, and by day three you are stashing away 3p.
The amounts remain small for most of the year, and even on the final day of the challenge, you will only have to add £3.65 to your pot.
If you stick to this every single day of a year, you will have an enormous £667.95 sitting in your account by the end.
The best part is that you can begin this challenge at any time, so do not panic if you missed the start of January.
You simply need to add up the total amount you would have saved on the days you missed to catch up and then carry on from there.
Money saving challenges
Here’s some of our favourite money saving challenges.
- Weather saving challenge – Save the amount equal to whatever the highest temperature was that week. £1 = 1C.
- 1p challenge – save 1p a day for everyday of the year, but it increase the amount by 1p each day. So day one you save 1p, 2p on day two and 3p on day three. When you reach 100 days you start adding a £1 coin each day too, while this increases to a £2 coin each day plus pennies at 200 days, and £3 each day on top of pennies at day 300.
- 20p a day challenge – Start by putting 20p in savings, then increase the amount by 20p every day. For example, the first week will look like this: 20p, 40p, 60p, 80p, £1, £1.20, £1.40.
- £5 a week challenge – Like the 20p challenge, put aside £5 a week and increase it by a fiver each week. Eg £5, £10, £15, £20
- Round-up challenge – Every time you buy something, round up the purchase to the nearest £1 and put the difference in a savings account. Eg. You pay £2.60, so you put 40p in savings. You can use an app such as Monzo or Starling to do this.
- Bingo challenge – Here you have a bingo card with different numbers on it and you tick them off when you’ve put that amount in your savings account. It can be ad hoc but you have to tick them all off by the end of the month.
- Monday to Sunday challenge – With this challenge, you simply save £1 on Monday, £2 on Tuesday and so on until the weekend where you don’t save on Saturday or Sunday.
- 365 day challenge – Every Sunday you put aside £1, followed by £2 on Monday, £3 on Wednesday and so on. On Saturday you’ll put away £7, and then the process repeats and you’ll put aside £1 on Sunday as the new week begins
