12 Surprisingly Fun Ways to Manage And Save Your Money

A coloring sheet like this is a fun way to motivate yourself. All sorts of different downloadables exist (or you can make your own) where little shapes represent different amounts. Color in when you save that amount and try to color the whole picture in!      

Whether you’re just trying to get out of debt, save for a vacation or save for just a rainy day, not spending money is your best bet. Set your rules (and involve the rest of your household too), including spending categories and time length and see if you can make it to your deadline without spending a dime. Here's how to get started and if you need help avoiding temptation, check out this guide, which walks you through potential triggers for spending and how to avoid them, like mailing lists and social media.       

Writing down what your spending is super helpful for both budgeting and seeing how much you have left to spend each month. Look for a book (or make a DIY binder) with monthly budgeting and tracking pages, a place to set goals and review pages to see how you did.    

If having money in hand makes budgeting easiest, use the envelope system. Set a budget based on your paycheck and divide into envelopes for categories like food, gas, personal care, entertainment, etc. When the envelope is empty, that’s it for the month, so it encourages you to spend wisely. Whatever’s left over can go into savings. This is also called “cash stuffing”. You can store all the envelopes in a wallet to keep them portable and neat. 

Similar to the cash envelope system, this cashless version is for those who use credit cards but still want to keep track of spending as they go. Instead of envelopes, you can use sheets for every category to log spending. Some trackers have straightforward logs to enter spending while some have symbols to color that represent a set amount.    

Sketch out all the bills you expect on a calendar for the month, color-coded by who in the household will be paying. Do a meal plan and then set a weekly budget so you’re prepare for what lies ahead.      

This is not a comprehensive system, but more of a quick reminder to keep you on track of your goals if you already bullet journal. Here, the path to saving is broken down in $100 increments, but you can choose whatever total and then break it down into smaller bites. As you save a chunk, color it in to show your progress. 

If all else fails and you know you can't be trusted, lock your money up in a safe and have someone else you trust set the code. At least this safe is cute.

On day one, save a penny. On day two, save two pennies. Keep going until you get to day 365 and you’ve saved $667.95.      

Get 50 envelopes, divide into sets of 10 and label each set as $100, $200, $300, $400 and $500. Shuffle them in a bag and pull out one a week (with two weeks off) and stuff that amount of cash in the envelop for savings. By the end of the year, you’ll have $15,000.      

Instead of saving up for a rainy day, save all year long. At the beginning of the month, save the same amount of cash as the outside temperature (with negative temps equaling double). At the end of the year, you’ll hopefully have a nice chunk of change.      

Do you have a large purchase in mind like a car, vacation or home repair? Create a sinking fund tracker. Figure out your end goal amount and the time frame you’ll need to save by. Then divide the total by time to figure out your monthly amount that you need to stash away to reach your goal.