The 1p Saving Challenge: Save £667.95 This Year
The 1p saving challenge means saving 1p on day one, 2p on day two, 3p on day three and so on for a full year — which adds up to £667.95 over 365 days. Every day you put away one penny more than you did yesterday, so it starts at almost nothing and finishes at £3.65 on the last day. No app, no direct debit, no minimum balance. Just a jar or a spare savings pot and one very small daily decision.
I’ve done it twice and I’m not going to pretend it changed my life. What it did was prove to me that I could save — which, after a few years of every spare pound being spoken for, was worth more than the money. The £667.95 (~$880 or so, depending on the day) landed the December I needed it most.
Why it works when other saving advice doesn’t
Most saving advice starts with “put aside £100 a month”, which is useless if you don’t have £100 a month. This one starts at a penny. Nobody has ever failed to find a penny.
It works because it front-loads the easy bit. The first three months ask for pennies while the habit forms; by the time the daily amounts are actually noticeable, you’ve been doing it for a hundred days and stopping feels stupid. It’s the same reason batch cooking sticks — the system does the discipline for you, so you’re not relying on willpower on a bad Wednesday.
The month-by-month amounts
Here’s the whole year if you start on 1 January in a non-leap year. This is the bit worth screenshotting, because “how much is this month going to cost me” is the only question you’ll actually ask.
| Month | Daily amounts | Saved that month | Running total |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 1p → 31p | £4.96 | £4.96 |
| February | 32p → 59p | £12.74 | £17.70 |
| March | 60p → 90p | £23.25 | £40.95 |
| April | 91p → £1.20 | £31.65 | £72.60 |
| May | £1.21 → £1.51 | £42.16 | £114.76 |
| June | £1.52 → £1.81 | £49.95 | £164.71 |
| July | £1.82 → £2.12 | £61.07 | £225.78 |
| August | £2.13 → £2.43 | £70.68 | £296.46 |
| September | £2.44 → £2.73 | £77.55 | £374.01 |
| October | £2.74 → £3.04 | £89.59 | £463.60 |
| November | £3.05 → £3.34 | £95.85 | £559.45 |
| December | £3.35 → £3.65 | £108.50 | £667.95 |
Two things jump out of that table. The first six months only account for about £165 of the total — the challenge is genuinely gentle for half the year. The second is that November and December, the two most expensive months in any household with children, are the two most expensive months of the challenge. Which brings us to the version I actually recommend.
The reverse 1p challenge (the one I do)
Run it backwards: start on 1 January at £3.65 and work down to 1p on 31 December. Same £667.95, same 365 days, completely different feel.
You save the hardest months in January and February, when Christmas is over and nobody is doing anything anyway, and you coast through November and December on pennies while your money is needed elsewhere. If you’ve ever abandoned a savings challenge in mid-December, this is why. Reverse it and the challenge gets easier exactly when your life gets harder.
The monthly version, if daily admin isn’t happening
Nobody sane is transferring 47p every night. Two ways to make it survivable:
- One transfer a month. Take the “saved that month” figure from the table above and move it in one go on pay day. Identical result, twelve actions instead of 365.
- One transfer a week. Roughly a seventh of the month’s total each week if your money comes in weekly.
The daily version is only better if you’re using physical cash in a jar, where the ritual is the point. For a bank account, monthly wins on every count.
Where to actually put it
Not in your current account. The whole thing dies the first time you look at your balance, think “oh, there’s £60 in there”, and buy school shoes with it.
A separate savings pot or a second account you don’t have a card for is enough. The interest is genuinely irrelevant here — on an average balance of a few hundred pounds, a good rate versus a bad one is a couple of quid over the year. What matters is friction: the money needs to be somewhere that takes thirty seconds and a decision to get at. If you’re doing the cash-jar version, a jar you can’t easily open is not a joke, it’s a strategy.
Making it work on a genuinely tight budget
Two honest caveats, because I’m not going to sell you a savings challenge without them.
If you’re in expensive debt, pay that first. Saving £667 at nothing while paying interest on a credit card or an overdraft is a net loss. Clear the expensive debt, then start.
Missing days doesn’t mean you’ve failed. The version of this that survives real life is: skip the days you can’t do, don’t try to catch up, and just keep going from wherever you are. Finishing on £480 is not a failed challenge. It’s £480 you didn’t have.
Where the money comes from matters more than the challenge itself. Mine mostly comes out of food — one prevented takeaway covers a whole fortnight of the later months, and shaving the shop with a proper meal plan or a run of cheap family dinners funds the back half of the year without me noticing. Round-up features on banking apps stack on top of it neatly too, since they take the same invisible-money approach from a different angle.
What to spend it on
Decide before you start, and write it down somewhere you’ll see it. “Savings” as an abstract goal loses to a bad week every time; “Christmas” or “the school trip” or “a boiler service” doesn’t.
Mine has gone on Christmas twice, which is exactly what the December finish is designed for. Other people I know use it for the summer holidays, a driving-lesson fund, or the emergency buffer that stops the next broken washing machine becoming a credit card balance. That last one is, boringly, the best use of it.
FAQ
How much do you save with the 1p challenge?
£667.95 over a 365-day year. In a leap year, the extra day at £3.66 takes it to £671.61. The maths is simply every number from 1 to 365 added together, in pennies.
Can you start the 1p challenge in the middle of the year?
Yes, and plenty of people do. You either start at 1p from whatever date you begin and finish 365 days later, or you jump in at the amount matching the day of the year — the second version means a bigger monthly commitment straight away, so unless money is comfortable I’d start at 1p and let the challenge run into next year.
What happens if I miss a few days?
Nothing. Skip them and carry on from the current day’s amount. Trying to catch up on a week’s missed payments in one go is how people quit — the challenge is a habit, and a habit with gaps in it is still a habit.
Is the 1p challenge worth doing if I can only save small amounts?
That’s exactly who it’s for. The alternative isn’t a better savings plan, it’s no savings plan. And there’s a version at any scale — halve every amount for a £334 year, or run it in 5p steps if money loosens up later.
