The 26 Bi-Weekly Money Challenge
By Jeffrey Strain, January 3rd, 2014 | 8 Comments »
26 Bi-Weekly Money Challenge (click on image to print)
The concept is exactly the same as the 52 week challenge, where you’re adding a single dollar for each week of the year. The only difference is that instead of making the payment each week, you combine two weekly payments into one, and make it every other week. There is no difference in the amount of money that is saved. At the end of the year you’ll still have saved $1378. The only difference is that you’ll be making 26 payments during the year, corresponding to your paychecks, which should make the challenge easier to accomplish.
With the standard 26 week version, you would make a payment of $3 ($1 for week one and $2 for week two) for the first bi-weekly payment, $7 ($3 for week three and $4 for week four) the second bi-weekly payment, $11 ($5 for week five and $6 for week six) for the third bi-weekly payment until you reach the 26th payment which would be $103 ($51 for week fifty-one and $52 for week fifty-two). While straight-forward and simple, there is a major drawback. As with the standard 52 week version, this can make if difficult to save money toward the end of the year with the high payments during the holiday season, and why we created an alternate version.
Alternate Version (click on image to print)
Go With Passive Savings Apps
If all this seems like too much effort, consider a passive way to save money. The last couple of years have seen rapid growth in apps which help people passively build their savings. One great new piece of software is digit.co. Digit is clever. It analyzes your checking account balances and then automatically makes small deductions which are swept into a savings account for you. Its super easy to install. Once you have it configured you pretty much need to make no effort to save, Digit does all the heavy lifting for you. Check it out at digit.co here.
Finally, if you’re still looking for the right challenge to fit your personality, here are a some other variations that might be worth taking a look at:
52 Week Alternatives
52 Week Standard
52 Week Variation
52 Week Make Money
52 Week Kids
Twice a Month (Bi-Monthly)
Monthly
365 Days
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Or you could do $53 per weekly check. It equals the same as the 52 week challenge but doesn’t have you breaking the bank during the holiday season. Or if you like the change reach week go backwards so at Christmas time you’re only doing $10 (because the bigger amounts are at the beginning of the year).
Also, reversing the payments yields more interest.
I’m setting up a seperate savings account to do this challenge and reversing the order so I start with $103 and $99 in January.
An average daily balance of over a hundred will yield more interest than an average daily balance of like 4/5.
Seeing $202 saved the first month plus interest is also more likely to make you feel like you are accomplishing something rather than just spinning your wheels.
Don’t you mean bi-monthly? We get paid twice a month, so I am looking for a schedule with 26 deposits for the year. Bi-weekly, means depositing twice a week, which would equal 104 deposits in a year? Am I confused?
Bi weekly means every other week
Bi-weekly is 26 weeks. Getting paid twice a month would be 24 weeks: http://www.savingadvice.com/articles/2014/01/05/1019901_bi-monthly-money-challenge-chart.html