Want one of these at the end of the year? Join us!

Welcome to the 52 week money savings challenge with a downloadable spreadsheet!

Are you trying to save money in 2013? I am! I think in 2012 I had what they call “frugality fatigue.” I know I had coupon burnout too. But now I’m rested, refreshed, looking at our family budget, and ready to get back into it.

There was a picture of a budget spreadsheet floating around Facebook, wish I knew who to credit it to. It’s a very simple but smart plan. So I put it into a spreadsheet for all of us to use. All you have to do is either download it and save it to your computer, or you can click “make a copy” and keep your own version in Google Docs if you use it. I think on Facebook it was called the ’52 week money challenge’ or something like that.

Look at the bottom, there are 3 tabs. There are 3 options to pick from when deciding what to save. One starts out low and grows, the next version is that in reverse. The third version is using Friday’s date as your savings amount–that’s for those that either don’t need/want to save as much money, or you’re struggling a bit so the amounts are lower. Someone on our Facebook wall had suggested a version that doubles every week-1-2-4-8-16 and so on. But by the end of March, you’re up to $500, so I nixed that one. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’m happy to edit the spreadsheet to add another tab.

2013 easy savings challenge

Author’s note: This has been a very popular post and too many people were making edits to the google doc online and messing up the formulas and totals. So I’m sorry that there is no longer an online version, as my choices are either “read only” or everyone can edit. You can save that copy to your computer, and if you want it online, upload it to google docs.

Let me know if you have any trouble or if it’s not working.