The Boardcast

The Saving Savings Challenge - Share Balance = $102

My Saving Savings adventure began on June 4th and by the post traffic it generated quite a bit of interest. The Saving Savings Challenge is based on a simple idea. Look for discounts and opportunities for saving, calculate the savings accomplished and save the savings by placing them in my UFirst share account. I'm happy to report that after 9 days I've broken the $100 mark. This is how I did it.

I described how I opened my account with $27 in my first post on 6/4. Many of us have dormant accounts that sit in financial institutions without activity for months and sometimes years. They dwindle away for lack of activity and often times laziness on our part. I'm no different. I'd been meaning to close an account that I rarely use for the past 6 months. I'm embarrassed to report that this same account was costing me $5 per month because it had been reduced below the minimum balance. I closed the account which contained $137 and deposited 1/2 of that in my Saving Savings account. I then added an additional $5 to my deposit of $68.50 since closing the account saved the fee for June. A day later I took advantage of a gas sale of $4.12 per gallon at a local Stewart's. That saved $1 which gave me a total of $74.50 which I rounded up to $75. My share account now contains $102. Can I keep saving my savings? Stay tuned to see.

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.)