Has anyone on here tried this yet? I first saw it on Pinterest and got re-directed to a blog. I was pretty interested in the theory, save all your lame 5's and have some side cash. Sounds easy enough? I figured we could use that money for an emergency, but it's worked so well that we're trying to start saving to buy a car. You can read about it here:Log In To sum it up, you can only spend your bigger bills and save all your $5's for the '$5 jar.' My hubby and I started doing this back in October 2012 and we were able to save $500 in 3 months, which is pretty decent for us considering we live on one person's income. We also suck at saving and this makes it fun, we get competitive over who gets to put in the most 5's(haha.) Anyways, I'd love to hear about anyone's experience with this and if it worked for your family.
This savings plan reminds me of the "saving your spare change" type plan. Instead of collecting your change, you're collecting your $5 bills. I can see the value in this type of saving plan.
I never thought of doing it with $5. I've saved $1 bills and change forever, and I even have my kids doing it too. $5 would certainly add up a lot faster. I also like it because it encourages me to use cash, and in general I think I spend less when I pay with cash.
I think it's a great idea! I wonder if I could do it. I might try. We're a family of 6 on 1.5 incomes, so money is very tight. But hey, every little bit helps!
This is an easy way to generate a steady stream of savings. Many times we undertake savings plans that can't be sustained long term. Our ambition isn't such a good counselor and accumulation strategies become a sudden failure. That is why I agree with this type of savings, without high claims and with clear goals. I will carefully read the article that you share and I take this opportunity to congratulate you on your economical achievement. It is important to find ways to enhance the economic capacity of our money, and this is an interesting alternative.
Interesting way to save money. I had never heard of it before but it sounds like it works really well. It seems like everytime we get a good savings going, something happens to knock it back down to nothing. We may have to give this a try. The hardest part will be to have cash sitting around, that would be really tempting to spend it!
When I used to mostly pay for things with cash, this would have been a brilliant plan and I see the value in it. Since I mostly pay for everything with debit cards and do all my banking electronically, I have to do the electronic equivalent of the $5 Plan, which is to transfer all the leftover odd amounts in my Paypal account that are left from paying bills ,into my savings account.
I actually have always been doing this from the moment I got my first paycheck. I usually tend to put aside about 10 dollars and then after a few months I spend it on something I have been craving for a long time. It's a great way to save and to reward yourself at the same time instead of spending that money on a pizza every week (haha).
My mom does something similar but its for Christmas expenses and she starts saving for the holidays every June. She sets aside the $5 bills she get from the start of June and by December she would have saved a decent amount so she does not have to charge anything to her credit card.
I've done something similar but it wasn't a year round thing. I usually do this when Christmas rolls around. I'd start in August and start saving my 5s and by the time I got to my shopping I'd have a nice little sum to spend. Since I'm leaning more towards spending cash these days I should start doing this all the time. It's not exactly some goal that's way out of my reach for me.
This does sound like a good plan to put a bit aside for an emergency. I save my change, which adds up quickly also. My daughter got a large jar for the kids and puts change in it for the kids christmas shopping money. They more than they thought would last christmas to have fun with.
That is such a great idea and congrats on saving that much! You guys rock! So excited for you guys. I know how hard it is to save. I have $0 in savings right now. I am so terrible with that. I am going to try this out. I always hear about saving 10% of your pay, but I just can't do that with my debt, but $5 here and there sounds manageable. Thanks so much for the tip!
This sounds like an exciting savings plan. However, I tend to live in an electronic world. I do not carry much cash. It has been my experience that the cash I carry seems to disappear. I would love to start some sort of savings plan. Maybe, I can take the fives out of the bank, and ask them to give me five dollar bills and attempt it this way.
I know what you mean about everything going toward your debt. This does sound like an exciting way to save. I am going to try it some how, or some way. I just do not carry cash. I am used to the electronic transactions. My savings is also at zero.
Same here. I think for a lot of people that saving all $5 might be too much for them....and if it isn't, then they should probably be setting up that money to be taken out of their bank accounts anyway. I'm glad to hear that it works for some people, though!
This does make sense and I am glad it works for you. I am one of those people who tries to save my loose change. I have a big coin jar and it usually adds up pretty fast. But if I was to apply the same principle with $5 it obviously would really add up faster. My biggest problem would be the urge to spend it. And some times things just come up where we need to spend it on unexpected events. But this may work to our advantage because if we see a nice egg nest accumulating we may be less likely to want to lose it. The worst anyone can do is try it. The best case senario is that you end up with a nice chunk of change in the end. And if icant save $5 with every payday at least I can put some in here and there. Every little bit really does help.
I save singles and change as well. Maybe once a month I will add a $10 or $20 bill to the jar, but I have never been as organized to only save $5 bills. I may give it a try, just wondering how many $5s I can save before I have to raid the jar for the kid(s lunch money. Very interesting idea though, thanks for sharing.
I can see the advantage of this saving plan and I might start doing this tomorrow. I did this with the spare change that I have every end of the day but saving 5$ might help me reach my savings goal faster which may enable me to save more money by the end of the year. Thanks for sharing this savings plan!
What a wonderful idea. I really like it. I don't use cash much -- I pretty much use my debit card all the time -- but I should try to do something similar at least.