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52 Week Money Challenge History

Image from allthingsmw

The 52 Week Money Challenge was made popular by Melanie Pinola under the Personal Finance Section of Lifehacker last December of 2013. It has been floating around the Internet since 2012 without any idea as to who really conceptualize it originally.

The oldest so far that Pinola dug up was a January 2013 post from Free Beer and Hot Wings. In turn, the said blog site also attributed the idea to Loose Wendy, a friend and former intern of Steve, the blog’s author. Loose Wendy posted a photo on her Facebook page about the 52 Week Money Challenge. This basically shows a road map on how one can be able to save as much as $1,400 over the course of 52 weeks. Steve thought that the challenge was super easy. Hence, it is no wonder that such photo was posted on numerous other sites and blogs.

The concept of the 52 Week Money Challenge is very simple. Even Steve agrees to this notion. Almost everyone can do this.


Pinola’s and Loose Wendy’s version involved saving a dollar and incremental dollar every week. There are 52 weeks in a year hence the title of the challenge. For example you save up $1 on your first week. The total savings sum is $1. On the second week, you add one dollar to the amount you would save. Instead of saving $1, you save $2. Adding the first week sum and the second week sum it will yield to $3. On the third week you add another dollar again from the $2 making it $3. Hence, the total amount would then be $6. This cycle goes on until the last week which is Week 52. In here you would save up $52 for this week hence summing up the amount from the first week until the 52 week, one would get as much as $1,378.00. 

Pinola stated that while these are considered tiny amounts, they add up to a big difference. The money that you saved in the process can be put up to your emergency fund or use it for something special. Even more, it surely is gratifying to see that your savings would be growing each week.

Loose Wendy and even Pinola suggested that you may also do the challenge in reverse. In here you work your way to lower amounts every week. You would start with $52 on the first week and lower the dollar increment after a week. Whatever rocks your boat whether the original or the reverse, you would still end up having $1,378 after 52 weeks. 






P.S. To those doing the 52 Week Money Challenge and 52 Week Money Challenge Version 2, it is Week 17 already! Did you deposit the next amount yet?

P.P.S Want to know more about investing, savings, stock market and more, check out my reference here. You can download free ebooks and resources too.