#RuleYourSavings from N26—or how I learned to stop worrying and love saving!

Have you ever embarked on a savings plan? If the answer is no, carry on reading and if your answer is yes … carry on reading anyways because we're quite sure that you've never tried anything as simple and effective as #RuleYourSavings! Let’s start with the premise that “it's not easy to save”, no matter how many times the rule of percentages is explained to us—the method of setting aside twenty or thirty percent of your salary every time you get paid, or that rent mustn't be more than a third of your income, etc., many of the theories that seem simple on paper are actually quite difficult when put into practice.

Surely this isn't the first time you’ve heard the term "money challenge"—there’s loads of very popular ones floating around online. The most-well-known one is probably the 52 - Week Money Challenge created by Kassondra Perry-Moreland on Facebook in 2013 through her group Kassondra's 52 Week Money Challenge. This challenge is based on saving an amount every week that corresponds to the number of the calendar week of the year that you're in. So you start off with an amount of €1 in the first week and end with €52 in the last week. If you stick to the challenge religiously, you'll end up saving a total amount of €1,378 by the end of the year.

As usual, there's more than one way of doing this challenge; some people propose going from difficult to easy, from more to less, starting off with €52 in the first week and ending with €1 in the last week. Everyone can do it the way that suits them best.

As you know, at N26 we think differently and that's why we take challenges just that one step further to make the most of them. In the N26 app, we’ve sub-accounts called Spaces, so we went out on a limb and started our own money challenge—#RuleYourSavings. We invite you to try it out and start saving without even noticing by using the automatic rules of the Spaces function. All you need to do is to set the frequency to daily and change the amount every month for your savings cushion to grow bigger and bigger. The best part is that if you keep it up for 12 months, you'll save €2,694!

Our challenge, #RuleYourSavings, is designed for a period of one year running from January to December, but you can start and stop whenever you like and adapt it to suit your needs.

Let's see how it works and what steps to follow:

1. Open your N26 app and create a Space. Call it whatever you like—we recommend giving it a name that describes your savings goal, like "Trip to Indonesia", "Diving course", "New laptop..."
2. Create an automatic rule that corresponds to the month that you're in: €1 for January, February €2, March €3 and so on. All you have to do is select "Repeat transfer", set the frequency to daily and choose an amount. You'll have to change this rule once a month when the new month begins. You can check out how to create an automatic rule here.
3. Feed your piggy bank something extra by transferring €26 to your Space every 26th of the month and so giving your savings a boost.
4. Let's get saving!

We invite you to join the challenge and let us know about your progress each month. You can do this by sharing your journey on social media using the #RuleYourSavings hashtag. Additionally—as this challenge is as flexible as you need it to be—we encourage you to adapt it to your way of life and financial situation, whenever and wherever you need to.