Micro-Savings.  Does it Work?

Let me start by saying - this post is simply a review of my experience with this experiment. If you're unfamiliar, let me explain - although there are a few different versions on this, I decided to go for this one...

Week 1 - Save £1

Week 2 - Save £2

Week 3 - Save £3 and so on until Week 52, where you save (yup) £52.

If you manage to make it to the final week, you will have accumulated a total of £1,378. As I'm writing this, I am on week 35, and I have a total of £630. I will say that looking at my bank account and seeing a figure increase every week is a great feeling. Granted, £630 is not a huge amount, but it is substantial enough to make me smile :)

Now to my only problem with the system... it's a very manual task. I opened a separate savings account to save this money. However, as the amount is different every week, I wasn't able to set up a Standing Order. I would have to move the money across myself - what a hard life! I guess the trickiest part is remembering to do it every week. However, I combated that by setting a weekly reminder on my calendar - problem solved. That being said, we do live in a world of apps, so there may be a simple app that automates this if you value the extra 1 minute of your week, but I've not bothered to look.

So is there a bad side to it? Not that I have discovered so far. Although, there may potentially be a hurdle towards the end as the weekly amounts will increase. So far so good though.

If you want to try a slightly different method, there is another option to take that requires a bit more remembering, but is less financial commitment. The systems is as follows -

Day 1 - £0.01

Day 2 - £0.02

Day 3 - £0.03 and so on. Day 365 - £3.65. By the end of the year, you should have £667.95 (I think, you may have to double check my math on that).

Micro-saving does seem to be a bit of a trend at the moment, and I've tried to stay away from trends - but this one makes a lot of sense. To sum up, it's definitely a good idea, and I encourage you to give it a go. Just remember to be disciplined, and not take the money out before the end :)