Its nearly the new year and its time to get those resolutions in  order.  For me, one of the main differences going into 2014 than when I went into 2013 was the fact that my husband and I have a new baby.  It used to just be the two of us, so budgeting wasn’t really a big deal.  This upcoming year we have to buckle down and make sure we’re being a responsible as possible and allocating our money in the most appropriate ways now that we’re a family of three.

I’m sure many of you have seen the 52 Week Money Challenge all over the web.  I remember seeing it last year and thinking it was a good idea, but never got around to doing it.  Well this year both Hubs and I are on board and committed to doing this challenge.

Source

The way the challenge works is simple.  Basically, you save the amount of money for each week of the year.  So for example, week 1 you save $1, week 2, $2, week 3, $3…and so on and so forth.  By the time you get to week 52 (the entire year) you save $52, and you are left with a total savings of $1378. For Hubs and I, we are actually both doing the challenge individually, so our total savings will be $2756 at the end of the challenge because of this.  Cha-Ching!

We are also going to add some flexibility into the challenge, in that we will contributing any extra that we can weekly.  Accountability will be huge with this challenge.  To hold ourselves and each other accountable, we will be using cold hard cash for this challenge.  This means as much as I love to use my electronic means for saving and spending money, I’ll actually have to have the cash in hand.  We all know how easy it is to just swipe that card, or transfer money back and forth between accounts. Its also easy to forget to do it, because its not tangible.

So here’s to nearly saving $3000 in the year 2014!  I can’t wait to pass go and collect it at the end of the year.

How about you?  – Do you have any New Year’s resolutions for 2014?  Thinking about doing the 52 Week Savings Challenge or any other type of challenge?

I’ll be periodically updating, say at the end of each quarter, so you will get a chance to follow along and see how Hubs & I do.

Happy Savings and New Year!

xxoo,