29 Jan

How Are You Doing with January’s Money-Saving Challenge?

Written by Kathryn Vercillo on January 29, 2010

For those of you who haven’t been paying attention to what we’re doing here on the blog, we’ve decided to help you to save money all year long by challenging you to a different money-saving technique every month throughout the year. If you manage to complete every month of the challenge then you should have at least £750 ($1200) to play around with when December rolls around. Don’t worry; it’s not too late to get started. You can still save a little bit of money with January’s challenge and you can always hop on board next month without falling too far behind the rest of us.

Recap: January’s Challenge

To recap, January’s challenge of the month was to give up spending money on television. This means that you stop your subscriptions to cable or satellite television or perhaps that you give up your Internet TV subscriptions or DVD rentals.

Problems that People May Be Running Into

This challenge isn’t an easy one. Being aware of the problems that people may be running into can help you stay on track with this month’s goal. Some common problems include:

Resistance to taking the challenge. A lot of people really don’t want to give up their televisions. They feel like it’s the only way that they can relax. If giving it up entirely seems too tough to you then start cutting back now. Maybe sometimes before the end of the year you’ll be ready to give it up. It doesn’t matter if you save the money now or later as long as you make steps now to get started. Give up one show per week or one hour per day of TV-watching and find something else to do during that time.
Replacing TV with other costly habits. Make sure that you’re not spending just as much money as before by using your old TV time to do something that costs money. Commit or re-commit to only enjoying free activities during this time to make sure that you’re really saving money.
Hating the challenge and planning to return to TV when the month is up. If you really hated this challenge and you plan to get TV again in February then just make sure that you’re smart about it. Look for a good deal to sign up for TV service again. Compare different providers. Choose the lowest-cost package that you can handle. And don’t beat yourself up. Not every money-saving challenge is going to be right for everyone but it’s great that you tried. Hopefully you learned something from the experience!
Not saving that much after all. If you’re someone who doesn’t spend a lot of money on TV then you may find that giving up television is easy enough but you’re not saving as much money as you’d hoped. The trick here is to ask yourself what you do spend money on that is equivalent to TV. Do you pay to play computer games? Do you buy expensive books? Cut these things out and you’ll start saving.

Some More Motivation

If you’ve been doing this challenge and need to stay motivated (or if you’re interested in starting this challenge now) then the following tips, suggestions and thoughts might help:

Keep a journal of the benefits you experience from not watching TV. Maybe you took a walk with your child and saw something new together. Maybe you have more time to talk to friends. Maybe you feel less addicted to technology. Listing the daily benefits of watching less TV will help you to see just how great this has been for you and will motivate you to keep it up.
Keep track of how much you can save by cutting back on TV. You can save a lot of money by cutting back on television, especially if it’s a big part of your life. Keep track of what you can save. Ask yourself what else you’d like to spend that money on instead. You can pay down debt, put some aside for vacation or use it to get something that you’ve always wanted.
Read the information at TurnOffYourTV.com. If you really need a reason to cut back on watching TV and the cost of it isn’t enough then you might find the many resources on this website to be of interest. They explain some of the reasons that TV isn’t good for you when viewed in excess!

Could you Keep it up All Year?

You’re coming to the end of the month. If you’re like the average person then you’ve probably saved somewhere between £30 and £45 ($50 and $75) so far this year. What if you continued to keep up this challenge for all of 2010? You could save at least £360 ($600) in this area alone which would put you well on your way to exceeding the annual challenge we’ve set here. If you use digital TV services or pay for premium channels then you could pay a lot more. What’s the worst that could happen? At the end of the year, you’ll have a nice bit of money to spend (or save) and you can renew your TV watching if it’s something that you still want in your life.

Tell Us How You’re Doing

If you’re participating in the challenge this month, we’d love to hear about your progress. Did you save any money? Remember that saving some is better than saving none. Did you face any big challenges? If you weren’t able to give this one up do you want to share why that is? By sharing this information we can all help each other to be more frugal!

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