Would love advice from the ladies on money saving approaches

[NestEggChick]

I could use some advice from all you lovely ladies out there, especially if you're your 20s and 30s and are sick of living paycheck-to-paycheck and want to have some money in the bank.

I've been an MMM follower since the early days, and sometime over the years I began offering budget advice to friends, and that turned into a small coaching business. Don't worry, I'm not selling anything here :)

I am going to offer a free email challenge and I'm having trouble setting the parameters. I would LOVE to get your opinions!

Would you be interested in a challenge that was:
From $0 to $300 in the bank in 10 days?
Another option is From $0 to $500 in the bank in 1 month

If you're interested, do you think you'd do the work? It would be 1 email every 2-4 days with tips to increase income and lower expenses. I'm keeping them fairly short and lower effort items. If you're not interested, why not? The more information, the better! Thanks! I really appreciate any feedback you can give. I'm going to announce this officially on Tuesday, so I need to hurry up and decide :)

[hunniebun]

I am pushing the high end of your interest group, and while I commend you for trying to help others get their financial house in order I would not likely be interested in this - reasons, I am a busy working mom and having one more email in my in box would seem like just one more thing on my to do list that didn't get done.  It seems like you are having a challenge or race to provide motivation which is awesome, but depending where your 'people' are at, saving 300 dollars in 10 days might seem like too much.  If you are looking at people with no debt and who just waste money no eating out and shopping, maybe, but for people really living paycheck to paycheck, getting to the root of why that is might be more useful.  You might also have more success with small baby steps...like start with saving 10$ a day for 10 days and then ramp that up as you move along.  Good luck with it all though!

[marielle]

I think most people here would not be a good target audience for saving a small amount over a week, month, etc. A lot of people are savings thousands of dollars a month here. But, everyone has some expenses they can cut. Can you maybe steer it towards more towards having people analyze certain expenses to see how much it is really costing them? For example, one email could mention bringing your lunch to work versus take out. Give people a little homework and ask them to add up how much their takeout is costing them over 10 years. You could use a number like MMM uses, where you take a monthly expense and multiply by 173. So if someone eats out 20x a month for lunch when at work, and lets say it's only $5 because these people are living paycheck to paycheck so they get cheap fast food, that's $100 a month times 173 = $17300 over 10 years.  Another email could be something like encouraging people to write down any little way they saved money each day, this could help snowball their savings effort. Perhaps you could compile a list of these little savings tips/changes that people send in and send everyone a short list of the best ones. One email could help people calculate how much their credit card debt is costing them each month. Small things like that. Maybe check out the Frugalwood's Uber Frugal January emails for inspiration?

[neophyte]

I'm 30 and relatively low income by MMM standards, but not living paycheck to paycheck. I've gotta say I also wouldn't be interested. I'm just not sure forum members are the right audience for that sort of coaching.  Personally, my reasons are:

1. I've already got well over $500 in the bank so $500 more doesn't sound like that big a deal to me.
2. My annual non-rent expenses last year were $6600 or $550 /month.  Yes, I could make some cuts, but I still have to pay for food, utilities, healthcare, and sometimes transportation. There simply isn't room in my budget to save an additional $500 /month. (Unless the simple tips are something like "ditch your apartment and squat in a crack house." But I'm not that into saving money. Yet.)

I think you'll find most forum members have already aggressively analyzed our budgets, and what fluff we haven't trimmed, we're not willing to give up.
 

[Raenia]

Same as the ladies above, I'm 27 but hardly considered myself as living paycheck to paycheck.  You'll be rather preaching to the choir with any budgeting advice on this forum!  So I would not be interested in either challenge because:

a) I already have >$500 in the bank
b) I already save >$500/mo
c) I challenge anyone to trim another $300/mo out of my budget without major changes (like moving), which I don't think is your intention here

We're just not the right crowd for this sort of thing, I'm afraid.

[ElleFiji]

I'm in my 30s, and I'd be open to participating to give you feedback, but I am not sure if I'm your target market.

I'm not that interested in a 0-500 type challenge because I'm past that. I think most people on this forum are. BUT, even when I was paycheque to paycheque, I didn't see it as 0. Sometimes I had 0, sometimes I had 700, sometimes I had 2000. I needed help figuring out to get that to 500, 1200 and 2500 without self-sabotage. I would never have seen myself as having 0, and would have happily given money and advice to people claiming to have 0.

I also think that getting to 300 or 500 in those timeframes might be too much for your target audience, without making more money or moving homes. Talking in percentages might help. The only way I can imagine hitting those numbers is by doing the ERE challenges, which are too tough.

My last weird thing, is that I'd love if a challenge like this had a habit survey before the automated emails. That way, if my coffee and lunch budget  is down to 0, you can still send me a list of habit changes that will help me meet my goals. Harder to automate, but more valuable.

[NestEggChick]

Thanks so much you guys! This is really helpful! And ElleFiji, I love a lot of the points you make here. Your mindset about "not having 0" is really helpful. Thanks everyone!

[bugbaby]

How about a challenge that addresses habits or livestyle with a specific goal (similar to gauntlet threads) such as
- save 10% of your pay in retirement this year
- no clothes shopping this year
- bring lunch to work daily for a month (share ideas & recipes)
- build $1k emergency fund in 3 months (share hacks)

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