
2019: The Official Savings Challenge
Happy new year, everyone, and welcome to the 2019 YNAB savings challenge!
All are very welcome to join in, no matter the size of your goals or savings purpose. Claim your line on the spreadsheet and then post your goal to this thread, then check in every month to update your progress on the spreadsheet and the thread. If you have a journal, you can also link this on the spreadsheet.
2019 Savings Challenge Spreadsheet
A special thanks to @Budget_Ninja for creating the spreadsheet and to speaking_of_art who is taking a second year as steward of the spreadsheet.
The 2018 savings challenge total is not yet completed, and there will be people still posting their final updates in early January, but I can see that as a group YNABers from both forums saved in excess of $760,000 (US $). That is outstanding!
Let the 2019 saving begin.
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First time joining in the savings challenge, even though I followed last years one closely but was not in a position to participate. I am excited to see what we can achieve this year.
Saving goals for 2019:
1. R 50 000 for taxes
2. R 6 000 for children's savings fund (future expenses like education, etc.)
3. R 6 000 for a family holiday
4. R 18 000 in various rainy day funds (Christmas, car and home maintenance, appliance replacement, etc.)
Total: R 80 000
This will be a serious stretch on our budget but hopefully do-able.
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A savings challenge newbie at line 99! Very excited.
We plan to save 8k more for a pool reno (we already have 2k), 1.8 for Christmas, 4 k for vacation, 5 k for our Buffer (which I'm seriously considering renaming based on many cool names seen here!), 2k for my niece's wedding in BC and .7k fir my daughter's uni grad present. All in all 21.5k!!!! Here we go!
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here I am with my first check-in!
as I mentioned, I am finishing off some goals from 2018 ($100 to my maternity pension and $60 to stork fund), so not committing as much as possible to this year's goals until next month. here are my numbers for January:
$106.24 to my emergency fund
$142.54 to my anniversary vacation
$3.37 to my moving expenses
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First time joining this challenge after starting YNAB mid-2017! I'm basically on top of my usual expenses and have started to develop OK savings habits, but am trying to be more disciplined about my savings due to a few things happening in the next couple of years:
- Planning a move overseas sometime in the mid-to-near term future due to my partner's job, which means I might not have a full year's worth income to work with in 2019 (depending on the timing of the move/resigning/finding another job). Want to make sure I have more than enough for the move (last time I moved countries I grossly underbudgeted and ended up having to get parental help, which I wasn't too happy about), whatever's left over after things have settled down will go into retirement/other long-term savings.
- Various overseas trips (friends' wedding, new baby in family, travel for fun)
- Longer-term stuff up to and including retirement
Overall I'm hoping to save 2,721,980 JPY which is a bit of a stretch goal (it is making a couple of assumptions about bonus and salary), but given I was able to save a similar amount last year on a slightly lower income I am going to go for it!)
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Thank you for hosting this year's Savings Challenge HappyDance !
First time participating in a savings challenge after having paid off the mortgage with the help and inspiration of Pay Down the Mortgage Challenges. That was great fun and really helped me stay the course. Now that I paid off the mortgage, insulated our home as good as possible, installed solar panels to reduce energy cost, our monthly bills are quite low which allows me to save more money so that I may be able to reach financial independence (as in, not being dependent on a job or regular income) in about four years from now. Nothing is certain, but it should be doable unless I somehow lose my current job.
I am 53 at the moment, and retirement age in The Netherlands is 67. I know my retirement accounts are very healthy, and will produce enough income (much more than we spend today!) when they start paying out. So, the aim is to bridge the gap between 53 and 67 by building up enough wealth. Every year, I expect to be able to send another 46-50K towards this goal, and every year the gap will be smaller in terms of the number of years to bridge. Time is at my side with this one! :-)
I am not sure what I will do when working for income becomes optional. Perhaps I just carry on, as I really like my current position. Nice challenges, a dynamic environment, great colleagues and great management.
In 2019, I want to save around €46,000, split over two parts:
- About €4,019 in a tax sheltered pension fund, and I will be able to deduct that amount from income tax. As my top rate is 51.75%, I do expect about €2,000 returned through the IRS beginning of 2020. It's my intent to pay the €4,019 at the end of the year unless I can prematurely deliver upon the second goal listed below;
- The more significant other part of savings (€42,000+) will go into purchasing IWDA (iShares Core MSCI World UCITS ETF), in monthly installments. I will just budget out normally each month and flow any excess funds into IWDA.
So, that's my plan anyway. Let's see what we can achieve. Anything over €46,019 for 2019 I consider a bonus! :-)
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January Check-In
$11,615 saved, leapfrogging me to 41.48% of my annual goal.
As mentioned in an earlier post up thread, $10,000 is a one-time savings boost from a cash inheritance from my dad's estate. Going forward, my savings rate is likely going to be the usual steady predictable amount.
I'll be checking in at the beginning of each month. I like to declare my savings when I budget for the month rather than wait to the end of the month and see if there is anything left over. Doing it that way is a more successful approach for me. I'm reluctant to change my challenge number, so it helps me not give in to impulse spending.
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January 2019 Savings Check-in:
Did not manage to save as much as we had hoped in January. I currently have a very variable income and had no funds to bring into our January budget (hopefully this means that February will be flush, but we shall see). Even so we managed to save a bit here and there, totaling to R 1 427.81.
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I'll do my check-in now too; I don't plan to allocate anything else to savings categories this month. I spent $1450 from one of my savings categories, but that was deferred spending and I don't deduct that from my savings totals.
January total: $6027.22
- 41 home wants
- 196 auto needs
- 529 home repairs
- 844.96 veterinary
- 4391.26 retirement and security
- 25 Travel
Future months will obviously be much less. I just wanted to shore up my emergency fund as much as possible right now and then build it more slowly, instead of steadier progress throughout the year.
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Do you include savings toward routine True Expenses, or just discretionary or long-term categories like Emergency Funds, Investments, Vacations and other out-year expenses? What about longer term, but annual expenses like Christmas? Christmas has a different feel since most of the spending happens at the end of the year.
I ask because the amount in my savings account grew a lot last year. But it was nearly all true expenses that are pretty well defined and expected like home and car maintenance, not just emergency funds, insurance deductibles, and investments.
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Line 110 claimed! I didn't plan on having an official savings goal on here but due to the government shutdown and me being a government contractor, I felt it best to scale back my debt payments and ramp up my savings just in case. My stretch goal is 20K, however 18K will give me a fully funded 6 months of expenses. I really plan on ramping up my savings come February onward. Happy savings every one!
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Poor grad student here; new to YNAB, but very excited about taking control of my money. I'm focusing on paying down my credit card debt ($2485), and job prospects after graduation are a bit uncertain right now, so I'm setting a goal of just $1000 (almost a month's income). This is mildly terrifying for me, but I'm taking the plunge! ID 112 in the spreadsheet.
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January check-in: Well, given the polar vortex & wind chills over -50, I don't plan on venturing out to spend any more money this month - so a good time to do my check-in. I was able to put extra towards savings this month, putting over $2k toward my overall goal. Next month will be much harder with more needing to go to other expenses. One month at a time.
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January Check In
My budgeted savings this month was $844.06 which I duly allocated at the beginning of the month. Now that the month is almost over, I've moved left over funds or challenged myself to round up some numbers to bring total for the month to $945.00.
- 320/3,046.32 Savings Buffer
- 60/500.04 for my son
- 200/2,252.76 for Christmas items
- 210/2,500.08 for Car Replacement
- 155/2,480.00 in salary sacrificed retirement contributions
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First time doing the savings challenge. Working more towards various savings goals instead of one big one. They are as follows: Retirement ($6000.00), New Car ($6000.00), Investment Accounts ($1300.00), and E-Fund ($6000.00). In total I want to save this year is $19300.00.
Let's get this party started with January Check-In 🎉
- Retirement: $500.00 / $6000.00
- New Car: $514.42 / $6000.00
- Investment Accounts $100.00 / $1300.00
- E-Fund: $626.88 / $6000.00
- Total: $1741.30 / $19300.00