frugal saver's 52 week challenge

[frugal saver]

Ok, because I never seem to follow the directions, this is my plan--

1. I have four online savings accounts, all with pitiful balances.
2. I printed out four challenge sheets and will have one for each account.
3. I plan to do this just till the end of 2016--and start a new one next year if it's still going on, so I only have 6 months.

Will I really accomplish four 52-week challenges in six months? Probably not. But I'm going to seriously try and anything I do accomplish will be more than what I've got now, so win-win.

First, I think I'm going to reserve the under-$5 slots for as long as I can--there might be a week where I need to do a $17-$1-$1-$1.

Generally, Monday is my "finance day" where I pay bills and balance my checkbook--and tomorrow the air conditioner repairman is coming--so I'll do a post hopefully every Monday with my progress.

[frugal saver]

Ok, doing this with all 4 accounts is possibly/probably crazy. But that's never stopped me before. I'll do what I can.

Week 1:

(Savings Account) #1--$25
#2--$25

[frugal saver]

Week 2:

Fence repair and had to see a doctor. Rough week.

$20 is all I managed to deposit.

[frugal saver]

Week 3--much better. Depositing $52 each in all four accounts.

[Outdoorsygal]

good job!

[frugal saver]

Thanks!! I finally got my income tax refund yesterday, so it's going right to savings.

[frugal saver]

Recap for July.

I didn't really think I'd manage to deposit money every week in all four accounts, but setting that as the goal, I did surprisingly well. All four accounts already had prior balances.

#1 2 deposits, ending balance $526
#2 2 deposits, ending balance $340
#3 3 deposits, ending balance $384
#4 2 deposits, ending balance $1138

August has 5 Tuesdays, so my goal is a minimum of 10 deposits for the month.

[ExcuseMyIgnorance]

Oh man - how are you planning on managing the cash? Won't you be tempted to spend the money?

[frugal saver]

Oh man - how are you planning on managing the cash? Won't you be tempted to spend the money?

Most of it is going to be used next spring when I start working on my house--I need electrical work and a variety of other things.

So no, I'm not tempted. It's either save up as much as possible now or take out a loan then.

[SavingSteve]

Nice work. Keep it up!

[frugal saver]

Thank you, SavingSteve.

I'd originally started this because I have a list of home improvements and planned to save up the money and start them next Spring.

One of them is upgrading my den to a home office which (in my mind, at least) will cause me to makes lots of money. Well, the stars apparently aligned and the office furniture I wanted all went on clearance and I've had two weeks to get all this together.

1. I didn't touch my current house savings or go in debt. But,
2. I haven't gotten anything into savings so far this month.

This upcoming week will be the worst/last of it--I have people coming to move some furniture out, move stuff to another room, and the furniture assembler to assemble the five boxes of furniture. My only additional expense left is to pay the people doing the moving--the assembler was included in the furniture price.

I'm hoping to be on track by Friday and to start back-paying the deposits I missed. I had a clear goal for August--but this will be worth it.

[james.hendrickson]

What about transferring the balances to a higher interest account? Would it be worth the hassle?

[frugal saver]

What about transferring the balances to a higher interest account? Would it be worth the hassle?

I'm getting 1.0% to 1.05% in the accounts now. Do you know of a bank paying higher?

I considered a short-term CD, but have found none paying even that much.

[james.hendrickson]

I just checked - I looks like the best deal out there is via Chase. They will give you $250 to sign up, but you need to have both a checking account and a savings account, with direct deposit and high dollar transfers.

So, it looks like you are optimized as far as interest goes.

If you have 3,000 you could always put your money into a bond fund. I like VBMFX, it pays 3% in monthly tranches, and you have the relative safety of bonds.

[frugal saver]

I just checked - I looks like the best deal out there is via Chase. They will give you $250 to sign up, but you need to have both a checking account and a savings account, with direct deposit and high dollar transfers.

So, it looks like you are optimized as far as interest goes.

If you have 3,000 you could always put your money into a bond fund. I like VBMFX, it pays 3% in monthly tranches, and you have the relative safety of bonds.

I will look into that, but I normally work with T. Rowe Price as my first choice.

I have a money market account right now that pays 3%, but it has an upper limit of $2,000 then pays 2% on the next $1,000--which is still good. It's Patelco Credit Union, which is a hassle for out of the area people to deal with. But if you're near one of their locations, it's a good deal.