The Saving Savings Challenge

My friend and fellow blogger Matt Davis the CU Warrior from Members Credit Union headquartered in Winston-Salem NC launched a new, innovative website called What Are You Saving For? to encourage saving among credit union members. Matt and his colleagues at Members CU have created a fun and rewarding way to get members to focus on saving for everything from trips to retirement. Matt's creativity got me thinking about my own saving habits. Recently, another fellow blogger, Tim McAlpine of Currency Marketing in Vancouver BC wrote about a meeting he attended. The featured presenter focused his talk on his opinion that people today have a hard time distinguishing between saving and savings. Tim observed,

"The retail industry has stolen the word 'saving' and redefined it as saving money     when spending. Saving used to mean putting money away in a savings account or in a piggy bank. But, now we must spend to save."

This got my attention because just that morning I had looked at a flyer from Aldi's Grocery Store and focused on an ad listing a gallon of milk for $2.19. Locally, milk is $3.06 a gallon and so I made plans to make a stop at Aldi's. I also remembered that last week I purchased computer software at a discounted price of $59 rather than $79. Was I confusing saving with savings as Tim suggested? It struck me that I might be able to turn this confusion into an advantage. I decided to give myself a challenge. I'm calling it the Saving Savings Challenge in honor of Tim whose blog post gave me the idea. Here's how it works. Each time I find a "bargain" or consciously make a lifestyle change that saves money, I'll deposit the difference between what I paid (or saved) and what I would have paid without the discount into a savings account. For example, since I bought 2 gallons of milk (I have a big freezer), I saved $1.74. I'll round that up to $2 and combine it with my software saving and deposit $22 in a brand new share account. This is an experiment and it may be a silly one at that but it's worth a try. I'm hoping to have enough by the end of December to help with the cost of a trip I'm planning to San Francisco in January. I'll be giving Boardcast readers a regular update on my successes (or failures) and, who knows, some of you might want to join me or give me some encouragement with your comments.

(As you can see I'm starting a new practice of signing posts.)

Comments

[Morriss Partee]

Savings doesn't really qualify as saving unless you do what you are going to be doing, and sock away the difference. Otherwise I could claim to have saved $137.5 million dollars today by not buying that F-22 fighter jet that I've always wanted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-22_Raptor

[Ginny Brady]

Hi Morriss, Right you are! That's why I decided to do my best to go the extra step and put the $ I'm saving into an account. An interesting side note: when I opened this account at Ufirst, Karen, the MSR who helped me said, "This is a great idea, I've been looking for ways to save - I'm going to try it, too."

[Andy LaFlamme]

Great idea Ginny, I know I struggle with doing this kind of thing. Usually if I "save" money by buying something on sale, it just gives me an excuse to spend the rest on something else. I think I might adopt this approach and see how it goes. Great post.

[Credit Union Warrior]

What an awesome idea!! I avoid paying full price for anything if I can help it. Putting those cost savings into a savings account will put any of my savings goals quickly within reach.

While I prefer the ease of savings via payroll deduction, I think your Savings Savings Challenge is an outstanding concept! The beauty to me of it is it should curtail spending... Even if you find something at a drastically reduced price, you know in the back of your mind that you will be responsible for the full price.

[Ginny Brady]

Andy, it will be fun to see if I can put this into practice. Let me know if you decide to take it on, too.

Matt, I agree, payroll deduction is the way to go. I have money taken out of my check each pay period for my deferred comp account and for general savings. The Saving Savings Challenge will let me see if I can put the cash I save on purchases to work for me. I'll be reporting on my progress with this a couple of times each month.