Want to know the easiest way to save £667.95 in a year?
Then I’ve got the thing for you…
The 365 Day Penny Challenge.
All you need is:
- A jar
- Pennies
- Will Power
Day 1 (usually 1st January) put 1p in the jar, the next day (Day 2) put 2p in and so on and so forth.
At the end of the 365 you will have save[d] £667.95!You're not doubling what you save; day 3 would involve putting in 3p, day 100 £1, and so on.
All groovy... except I doubt that it's sustainable. A person could quite easily have, say, £3 in their pocket to put into the jar on day 300. But that they'd have almost £3 on day 299, AND £3 on day 300, AND £3.01 on day 301, and so on looks to me to be more of a stretch. (That'd amount to over £21 in loose change over the course of a week.)
If you do have that amount of loose change every day, I suspect it's because you're going to the bank and taking out £5 every day, some of which you spend on odds and sods. But you're still taking out £5. Banking the change - which is in effect what you're doing by putting the change in a jar - is not making a saving. It's just a matter of not spending the change.
Genius.
People are sharing this and calling it a good idea.
Besides: who pays for everything with cash anyway? The whole premise of this rests on the idea that you're going to be forced to take money out from the bank every day in fixed denominations greater than you would want to spend (unless you're withdrawing money just so that you can put it in your jar, which is ridiculous). But Tesco and pubs all take plastic now. Hell, even my milkman takes a direct debit.
In other words, the idea isn't just capitalising on people withdrawing cash in fixed denominations greater than they would want to spend; it requires it, in the face of there being much more efficient and secure ways to buy stuff. The only people for whom this could conceivably work are in the cash-in-hand economy. For people who aren't my window-cleaner or builder... it's a bit dim.
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