Zero in Savings? A New Year Means New Opportunities to Increase Your Savings - The 52 Week Money Challenge

Written by Lyn Brooks, Staff Writer

Zero in savings? We started 2016 with $0 in savings. Sadly, my family and I are not alone. According to a late 2015 survey by GoBankingRates, 28% of Americans have zero in savings, and 62% have less than $1,000 saved. What are any of us thinking? Who do we expect to help save us should a financial emergency occur? Santa Claus?

Whenever I think about the current state of my family's finances and our lack of savings, which is almost constantly, I start to feel a bit down, but then I remind myself that a new year means new opportunities!

How We Ended Up with Zero in Savings

The last few years have been extremely difficult, financially. I've survived several critical, and expensive to treat, illnesses. I then lost my job in the Great Recession.

When I couldn't find a new job in my area, I turned to freelance writing to try to make ends meet. For those of you that aren't freelancers, writing is truly a feast to famine proposition, but in my area there really isn't any other opportunities to increase my income.

My local economy is still depressed, with new layoffs being announced each week, so it continues to look unlikely that I will find a new job any time soon that will bring in more than what I manage to rake and scrape together freelancing.

In addition to my unstable income issues, last year my husband needed to resign his position of nine years and was then unemployed for another six months.

During this time, our home and garage suffered extensive damage during a winter storm that saw over three feet of snow fall in our area in less than 24 hours. Then the temperatures slipped to 24 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, taking out all of our plumbing. We lost a good portion of our personal belongings. We are still having issues getting the insurance settlement released so that we can finish repairing and rebuilding everything that we lost.

A few months later, my mother, who has been staying with us after surviving a stroke, accidentally caught a pan on my stove on fire. It took out the stove, the two walls around the stove and the exhaust and two cabinets above, as well as smokey soot on the ceilings and surfaces throughout my home. So, now we are without a stove to cook on, in addition to the other issues.

We've  ended up spending our entire life's savings in order to survive through all of these trials. It was the only way to avoid filing bankruptcy. It's still difficult to make ends meet, but slowly we are clawing our way back.

I am 47, my husband is 54, and, we have no savings!

Steps We Are Taking to Begin Rebuilding Savings

This is a new year, hopefully it will be a better one for us, and millions of others, financially. As this new year is starting, I know this is the year that we must at least begin to think about rebuilding our savings. We are both getting older, and not in the best of health, so, realistically, there really isn't a lot of time left to rebuild our retirement nest egg.

401(k) Savings

Our main issue at the moment is that we realistically don't have a lot of expendable income to divert to savings. My husband just became eligible to contribute to his new employer's 401(k) and so he is contributing 10% at the moment.

It's the start of the new year, and my income from writing really doesn't start picking up until later in the spring. I suppose I could wait to being saving, but I really feel that it's important to start now, while I have this "new year, new opportunity" mindset and momentum  going for me.

Saving Tax Refund

Of course, we already plan to save the bulk of our tax refund that we will receive later in the spring, and that should be a little over a thousand dollars. I really want to do something in addition to this and my husband's 401(k) contribution though, something that will get us back in the habit of setting aside money for our savings on a regular basis.

Start Small and Build - The 52 Week Money Saving Challenge

That's why we've decided to do the 52 Week Money Saving Challenge. It's a really simple strategy to help folks get back in the weekly habit of saving money. I like it because it starts with a small amount, just $1 the first week, and lets you slowly increase the amount you are saving each week, so that it feels less painful to your budget. It also works out well with the cash flow cycle that is generated by my freelance writing income.

Getting started is really simple. Set aside $1 at the end of the first week, $2 for the second week of the year, $3 for the third, and then continuing on and adding just one additional dollar that you set aside for each week of the year. At the end, you should have $1,378 saved.

I know that in the grand scheme of things, $1,378 is not really a lot of money. Certainly not enough to retire on in a few years. But, it does help us to begin rebuilding our savings.

As the year continues, I plan on looking for more ways for us to increase our savings. To reach our goals, we will need to cut back on spending, as well as looking for ways to grow our income. I plan on sharing my journey with you. I hope that sharing my successes and failures, will help others, and, I hope that you, dear reader, will help me by sharing your tips and words of encouragement in the comments section!

Getting Started Saving Money

2016 began on a Friday, and so, I began my week 1 on the first day of the year. This year will also end on a Saturday, so my week 52 will end on Friday, December 30th, instead of the 31st. Week 5 just recently passed, and so, I have $15 in my savings at this point. ($1+$2+$3+$4+$5) This coming Friday, February 5th, will be the start of Week 6 and so I will deposit $6 to our savings account on this date.

Again, I know this isn't a lot, but it's a start! It's also still not too late to join me! Just deposit/transfer $15 into your savings account, or, if you don't have a savings account yet, put it in a jar or other container to save up and deposit later. Then, as each week passes, increase the amount that you add to your savings by just one dollar more. At the end of the year you will be $1,378 closer to reaching your grand savings goal.

We are saving to build an emergency fund, and then, add to our retirement savings. How do you plan to use your savings?

Photo Credit: Flickr, Images_of_Money

Apps and Sites that Let You Shop Without Money

By Lyn Brooks, Contributor

If you are short on cash, you might want to consider using sites and apps that make it easy to share, lend and barter to help you save money on everyday activities. 

Sites My Family Uses to Get What We Need and Want While Spending Little to Nothing in Money

The age old system of bartering to exchange resources is alive and well in America, and several apps and sites make it easy for my family to get what we need or want while paying little, if any, money.

I live in a family of book lovers, and we use to spend $50 to $100 a month on books, but not anymore. We've been able to exchange books for free with other members on BookMooch and Swap.com. Swap also allows you to swap video games, and DVDs, and you just pay for shipping. Both sites have really helped us to lower our cost for entertainment.

When my son moved 500 miles away to attend college in the city, he used Zipcar to rent a car for next to nothing when he needed one for special trips a couple of times each semester.

My oldest daughter saves money on name brand or designer clothing by using Swapstyle to swap clothes with others around the world.

We also use our regional Craigslist to find used items at a low cost. When I was unemployed and our refrigerator, stove and dryer all died within 17 days of one another, we were able to find replacements for $50, $25 and $20 through this site. The appliances look and work great and we are still using them today. Most Craigslist groups also have a Free section -- which is where we scored a free upright piano that was in pristine condition when our youngest daughter wanted to learn to play.

A site that we turn to frequently to find the items that we want and need for free is Freecycle, and the most interesting item that I have ever received also came from this site. This site has literally come to my family's rescue countless times.

Most of the items that I've receive through Freecycle have been fairly straight forward exchanges, but the very first time that I participated really stands out in my mind. One poster listed several bags full of boys clothing to give away, as long as you agreed to take away a "couple of leftover moving sale items as well," as the poster was leaving that afternoon to move to a new state.

I readily agreed and drove into the nearby city to collect the items. I arrived literally as they were closing the doors to their moving van and getting ready to drive off. A very nice lady loaded 3 large trash bags into the trunk of my car and said, "Whatever you can't use, please pass on to someone who can, just don't let it end up in a landfill." She then drove away in the moving van, and I drove home.

Once I got home, I started to go through the bags. In the first bag, there were several pairs of brand name jeans, that were barely worn and fit my son perfectly, as well as several pullovers and hoodies. My son basically had a new wardrobe.

In the second bag there was a really nice, lined khaki jacket with multiple pockets that is perfect for my husband's hiking trips. We looked it up and found that this particular brand costs several hundreds of dollars new, and it was in pristine condition.

In the third bag we found the most surprising and unexpected item -- mixed in with the lady's unwanted plastic storage containers and kitchen gadgets was an object that I didn't recognize. I speculated that it was perhaps some sort of musical instrument -- which made my husband laugh when he corrected me -- it was a pot bong! Of course, we didn't keep that item since its illegal, but it made the experience memorable!

All of these sites have helped us to drastically reduce the amount of money that we spend.

I love receiving feedback from my readers! Have you ever used one of these sites to get a low cost or free deal on something that you wanted or needed? Why not share your favorite sites and apps with your fellow readers so that they, too, can start saving money and begin to get out of debt?

Photo Credit: fontplaydotcom

Top 5 Personal Finance Apps

By Lyn Brooks,  Contributor 

It seems like there is an app for everything these days, including apps for saving money and budgeting. There are literally thousands of personal finance apps on the market to chose from, but I've found that the following five are the best personal finance apps that help users like me to create budgets and save money. Using these apps has helped me to be successful in modifying my family's behavior so that we can stop living paycheck to paycheck and get our finances on track.

Mint

Mint is available for desktop users as well as Android and iPhone users. Just download the free app and this program makes it super easy to perform three tasks that I've found are absolutely necessary to get our finances in order: create a budget, track spending and save money.

I've linked my Mint account with most of my lenders, so that the program sends me payment reminders, and I also receive email notifications of any usual spending, or when I get close to maxing my budget in a certain category. All of the spending on my debit and credit cards is automatically entered and categorized, so that I can instantly see where my money is going without having to bother with complicated spreadsheets or calculations.

The program provides helpful hints about how and where I can save, and allows me to set multiple savings goals. Since I've started using this program, I was able to visually see and eliminate those tiny "budget busters" that add up over time. 

In just a few months, the program helped me to establish and fund a $500 and $1,500 short and mid-term emergency savings funds. So far, the main drawback that I've discovered with this program is that there are a few lenders that the program is unable to access and sync information with, so I have to manually update those accounts each month.

Big Oven

As part of creating and sticking to a budget, we've been looking for ways to reduce waste and save money. When we analyzed our family's spending, we found that one of our family's biggest expenditures was food. We were able to save quite a bit by eliminating fast food and now only rarely dine out. Groceries are still expensive, and there are reports and studies that show that most Americans waste over 40% of their food each year. My family wasn't an exception to this startling fact.

By using free apps such as Big Oven, it's easy to come up with new twists on common leftovers. Just pick three items you have on hand, and viola the app will give you an easy recipe that's quick to make and delicious. This is especially handy for those times when you've made all of your regular "stand-by recipes," and you are tempted to eat out just to have something "different" to eat. The app comes with features such as a meal planner and grocery lists as well. It's available for desktop and PC users on the web, as well as for Android, iPhone, iPad, Kindle, Nook and Windows phone users, and it's free.

Grocery iQ

This is another great app that we've been using to save money on food. This app works with coupons.com, so I don't have to worry about printing out coupons. I just save coupons with the app, and I can link my store savings cards as well. It also helps me to stay on track as I can easily create lists, sort items by aisle and even scan bar codes to add items. The program allows you to email and share lists and coupons as well. It's free, and is available on the web, as well as for iPhone, Android, iPad and iPod Touch users.

RedLaser

This app makes it easy to compare prices for an item at different retailers. I just scan the barcode, and the program searches and compares the prices at the online site for many top retailers. This not only helps me to save money on the actual purchase, but I save time as well as the gas I would have spent driving around looking for the lowest price on an item. 

A few weeks ago, I was able to save about $12 on a present for my daughter by comparing prices on a pair of jeans and a blouse. While $12 isn't much in and of itself, saving a few dollars here and there on purchases I was going to make anyway does add up over time. In addition to making it easier to save money when shopping, the app provides other helpful information. One of my favorites is that it will locate the nearest location of a book that I want to read, and will include the library as well as stores and online shops in the search results. This shopping app is free, and available for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone users.

GasBuddy

This app has been around for several years, but I've not found anything that beats if for instantly giving me an easy to use, side by side comparison for the cost of gas at all of my area gas stations. It's great to use at home, or even when I am on a trip. The app is free and I can access it on the web. It's also available for Apple, Android, Windows Phone and Blackberry devices. Even if I am only saving a penny or two a gallon, it all adds up in the end and helps me to be able to increase my family's savings fund.

Of course, there are other apps that can help you and your family to track your finances and save money. Let me know in the comments section below if you've tried any of these apps to save money, or if you have any favorite personal finance apps that are helping you to stop living paycheck to paycheck.

Photo Credit: Jason A. Howie

This is an updated personal finance article written by the author that was originally published on Yahoo! earlier in 2014.