Use Our Budget Buddy Tool To Help You Save
The last year saw some incredible changes in the savings space and savings providers had to really understand what our members and customers needs and objectives were, to be able to offer products that suited everyone.
Whether you are saving for a deposit for a house, your dream wedding, a new car, the holiday of a lifetime, saving for the children, the grand-children or even just your own rainy-day fund, you first need to understand your budget!
Our re-vamped budget buddy is a great tool, in an editable format to help you see your monthly finances easily. Firstly, you review how much money is coming in, whether that’s through your salary, savings, pension, rental yields etc. Then review your essential expenditure and any personal expenditure that you have planned for each month. Once you have completed the document, total everything up at the end, and see what you have left.
There are a few ways of saving that could work best for you, and it's all about understanding your budget first, making sure the essentials are taken care of before putting money into a savings account that may limit access to your funds for a period of time.
A penny a day challenge
The logic behind this is that you save 1p on day 1, then add a penny to your amount each day. This can take a few different approaches, some like to do it in reverse, so you aren’t putting the larger amounts away in the lead up to Christmas, some like to have all the amounts and choose at random how much to put away.
You can download a printable PDF here and tick the days off as you go in whichever order you choose!
If you’d prefer to do monthly totals, these work out as:
|
January |
February |
March |
|
£4.96 |
£12.74 |
£23.25 |
|
April |
May |
June |
|
£31.65 |
£42.16 |
£49.95 |
|
July |
August |
September |
|
£61.07 |
£70.68 |
£77.55 |
|
October |
November |
December |
|
£89.59 |
£95.85 |
£112.16 |
Or in reverse:
|
January |
February |
March |
|
£112.16 |
£95.85 |
£89.59 |
|
April |
May |
June |
|
£77.55 |
£70.68 |
£61.07 |
|
July |
August |
September |
|
£49.95 |
£42.16 |
£31.65 |
|
October |
November |
December |
|
£23.25 |
£12.74 |
£4.96 |
You will need the right type of savings account to be able to deposit whenever you like, so this type of regular savings is generally suited to an instant savings account, that has no restrictions on when you can deposit.
Whether you want to use the 1p savings challenge or not, I recommend taking a look at our new budget buddy and set some personal savings goals for 2024 and make your savings work harder for you.
