Even if your best intentions for new year’s resolutions have already fallen by the wayside, you don’t need to write 2026 off as a dead loss.
This is a great time of year to get stuck into a savings challenge – either a fun, quick fix to get back on track or a longer-term change designed to make saving easier.
Quick fixes worth a try
The aim of a quick fix savings challenge is to bring some novelty into the process of saving, to help you stick with it. You could opt for a “no spend” challenge, where you pick a day, a week or even a month where you try not to spend any money beyond the bills and basic food.
These don’t work if you just save up everything you need to buy to the end of the challenge, so you actively need to work at finding cost-free options, and moving any money you would have spent into a savings account. If you can start this with a friend, you can get a kick out of finding freebies and getting stuck into free activities together.
Read more: How to manage a Christmas debt hangover
You could try the envelope challenge. The original version of this was to get 100 envelopes labelled 1-100, pick one each day and put the relevant number of pounds in the envelope. However, you can tailor it to whatever is reasonable for you – this might be to label it 1-10 ten times. It also makes more sense to use pieces of paper in a hat, pull one each day and transfer the sum to a savings account. If you use 1-10 ten times, by the end of 100 days you’ll have put aside £550. If you use 1-20 five times, you’ll have £1,050.
You can take on the 1p savings challenge, where on day 1 you put a penny aside, day 2 you save 2p, day 3 you save 3p, and so on. You can keep going for as long as you want, and build up a savings habit while you build your savings.
Longer-term approaches
Some people have a “revenge saving” rule, so that if they splurge money on something they don’t need, they have to put money into a savings account. Some will choose bad shopping habits – like late night scrolling on social media. Others will pick particular retailers to apply the rule to.
Don’t try to do it with all your spending, because you’ll end up running out of cash, but it can be a useful way to make you think twice about your spending – and boost savings at the same time.
You can implement reverse budgeting, where instead of working out what you can afford to save after everything you want to spend, you put money into your savings account on payday and then budget with what you have left. It’s worth automating this by direct debit, so you don’t have to remember to do the right thing every month. If you’re worried you might run out of money, you can start small, and revisit whether you can afford more after a couple of months.