Try This Easy Way To Save

YOU reporter Shanaaz Prince explains the 52-week savings plan that will pay for her next holiday

IT’S January, the start of a new year full of promise, opportunity and all that. But for many of us, it’s also a month of worry – or Januworry, as it’s aptly been dubbed.

The festive season has come and gone, leaving us with memories, a few extra rolls around our middle and a rather empty wallet. The bonus has been blown and the budget seriously stretched as long weeks loom until payday.

At this stage, keeping food in the fridge and loo paper in the bathroom is challenge enough and the thought of saving is probably as foreign as spreading caviar on your toast.

But it can be done. It can! And I know because I discovered a plan that makes it possible.

It all started last year when a friend told me, “I found this 52-week savings programme and I think we should all try it.”

I needed no persuasion. In 2016 we’d gone on a girls’ trip to Thailand and the last-minute rush to save was a nightmare.

When I got back I resolved to be that person – the one who saves for something. It needs discipline and dedication but it can be done.

HERE’S how it works. The 52-week savings plan is based on the premise that every week of the year you save some money in order to accumulate a lump sum at the end of the year that you can use for whatever you want: a holiday, honeymoon or new TV or to have cash in hand to buy your kids’ school clothes and stationery and pay their school fees.

Stick to the plan and by the end of the year you’ll have accumulated R13 780. You start off by saving R10 in the first week, then you add R10 to each week’s savings amount – or to make things a bit easier, simply multiply R10 by the week you’re in.