“A fool can earn money; but it takes a wise man to save and dispose of it to his own advantage.” -Brigham Young

There are plenty of money-saving challenges that have gone viral on social media.

There’s the 52-week challenge, where in the amount you save goes higher every week, which I haven’t tried.

There’s the PHP50.00 challenge wherein PHP50.00 bill should be invisible every time you receive it you’re not allowed to spend it, which was very interesting for me, so I personally tried it. Here’s my post about When I tried PHP 50 Savings Challenge. I’m continuously doing the challenge, however it’s taking sometime because it’s not very often that I received PHP 50.00 bill.

Then I saw a video of my friend on her “FB stories”, she was holding a can on her hand and on the can it has different picture of coins and bills and circles next to it (some circles are already shaded) and there’s a title on the top part in bold letters. “PISO SENSE IPON CHALLENGE 2018”, but the sub-title really interest me even it’s written smaller that the title the peso sign and the digit catch my attention, “PHP 53,750.00 if you complete”.

Image Source

Then I immediately made a research online, I’ve learned that an elementary math teacher from Magallanes, Sorsogon, Philippines named Sarah May Hallig-Palanca, invented the ipon-shade challenge (save and shade challenge) shading is the type of her exam, then she realized that the shading examination sheets during exams can also be applied in saving money. She said that shading will help the money-savers challenged and stay organized. It’s easy all you have to do is to shade the amount that you put into your piggy bank. The end goal is to shade all the circles.

As I was doing my little research, I saw online sellers, selling a thrift can exactly what my friend had, which costs PHP80.00-PHP150.00 per can. In case you want to buy one just check this link. Alkansya for sale

In my case I don’t want to spend for the can anymore since my kids have an extra piggy bank that I can use for the coins and I also have a spare wallet for the papers, so what I did instead is I printed out a pdf file that is available online for free, so why spend right? Haha

I want to make your life easy so here’s the link.
FREE PDF FILE

I started this challenge March 22, 2018, so basically I will show you a months’ progress. Are you as excited as I am? LOL

Here it is! I think this is really a good start. I think I almost shaded half of it.

What I personally like about it is that the method is flexible as there’s no specific time and amount to follow. The amount that I’m receiving every month didn’t change. The lifestyle did. We love to eat out before that’s how we bond most of the time, but now I talked to my kids and set their expectation that eating out will be lessen. I don’t want them to have a negative impression about savings taking their happiness away LOL, so instead of going out. I involved them from choosing what they like to eat, to buying the ingredient from the market, to cooking, to taking pictures and to eating together. It’s a little harder than eating out but I swear it gives the same joy plus better financial situation.

To wrap this up let me leave you a quote by T.T. Munger:

“The habit of saving is itself an education; it fosters every virtue, teaches self-denial, cultivates the sense of order, trains to forethought, and so broadens the mind.”

I’m sharing this with the hope of motivating others to start saving money. Feel free to leave a comment down below. Your feedback will be very much appreciated.