$1000 Emergency Fund Challenge and Free Printable

This $1000 Emergency Fund Printable will challenge you to set up an emergency stash so you are ready for those 911 days.

The news is not good! Too many of us just aren’t prepared for an unexpected bill.  Because you are reading this, I know that you are going to get ready for it! 

• Bankrate.com “A Growing Percentage of Americans Have No Emergency Fund Whatsoever” 
• CNBC “A $1000 Emergency Would Set Most Americans Into Debt” 
• New York Time “Even in Strong Economy, Most Families Don’t Have Enough Emergency Savings” 

What do you do when an unexpected event happens in your life and you have to outlay money? You know the ones: 

• Large medical bill 
• New set of tires 
• Oven broke (which happened to us last week)
• Leak underneath the sink 

I could go on and on, but I suspect that you all know what I’m talking about here. It happens to all of us and it is what we call LIFE. It doesn’t mean we did something bad but it does mean something bad happened. 

Ok, great. Now we have to have a plan on how to deal with the unexpected. Let’s get started to find out how you can find that money in your day-to-day budget, especially when you are living paycheck to paycheck. 

💸 How to Create

For families that are raking in the dough, it’s a lot easier to fund traditional Emergency Funds. For a lot of us, we need to find new and creative ways to get that fund started. It’s hard.  It sucks. We know it!

We have featured the Penny Challenge and the 52 Week Money Challenge as creative ways to start saving money. It is especially fun if you have kids because it is a great way to get them to participate and teach them about money too.

If you haven’t started anywhere, those are great ways to begin! You can quickly start to feel good about your saving as you’ll see immediate results! Seriously, try the Penny Challenge first. That one gets you so excited and you are going to feel like you can save millions-almost! 

💵 Where to Find Money

When it’s time to save money, it’s also time to become creative! For this one, I broke up the goals into small, manageable $10 increments. It is done that way to be easy and obtainable for most of us. 

If you think “wait, that is still too far off!!” It’s ok, let me help with a few creative ideas. Since we know money is not going to fall from the sky, you will have to give it a little bit of work. 

💰 Daily Spending Printable

Use the Daily Spending Printable and see where your money is going on a DAILY basis. A lot of us think we have no money until we realize we are spending $6 for take-out coffee and $10 for take-out lunch. Remember, you “weren’t spending anything.” The Printable is also a great way to minimize unnecessary gathering at the grocery store. Were you spending money on magazines that you looked at for just a few minutes before throwing them away? Take the time to write down all of your spendings to see where you can find opportunities. You might be able to change morning coffees and fund your account on just that one change in your life! 

🏦 Expense Printable

Use the Expense Printable to keep track of all of your expenses in your house. You are looking for each and everything that you spend money on. This differs from the Daily Spending Log. The Daily Spending logs what comes out of your Debit card or what you are spending from your cash/checkbook. The Expense Tracker will catch your cell phone bill, Netflix…this is the perfect time to catch if you are being charged for three different streaming accounts (urgh! Hulu, Netflix and Amazon!). Let’s not go into details on how that happened to me! 💸💸💸 Maybe freeing up one of those will help you meet your goals.

🛍️ Grocery Comparison Printable

Use the Grocery Comparison Printable to see where you could start saving money on your groceries. This nifty tool takes a little bit of energy to set up, but it resulted in significant savings EACH WEEK for me. Saving money takes effort, I’m not going to lie to you here. This is one piece of the puzzle that can save you so much money. Yes, you are going to compare prices from two or three of your local grocery stores with the common items that you buy. But, you’ll quickly find areas to make smart grocery shopping decisions and start saving. This will take you about 2-3 hours of work including travel time but will add money to your checking account each and every week.

🔌 Tips to Save Money on Electric and Water Bill

Check out the 15 Ways to Save Money on Your Electric and Water Bill to find ways to cut back on utility bills. Yes, we all say this, but we are giving you the tips and tricks to do this so you can reap the benefits. This will generally take 2-3 months to feel the difference in your bill.

📎 Money Envelope Templates

The Money Envelope Template is the game changer! This takes budgeting to a whole new level. Separate your weekly money into different envelopes and only spend what is in that envelope for that purpose.

It requires discipline, but leftover money can be used for your savings It’s funny, but seeing the cash in an envelope changes the way you think about spending it.  

📒 Track Your Monthly Bills

Use the Monthly Bill Worksheet to track your bills so you don’t end up paying late fees because you accidentally missed a bill. That is just throwing money away! If you check off every time you pay your cable bill (if you are on auto-pay – bless you!!) then you know you’ve paid it and you don’t have to fear those pesky late fees…each one can be $10-35 EACH! Um, no way! 

📋 Save Money with Meal Planners

Plan out your weekly meals using a Meal Planner! How many times do we randomly go to the store and pick up stuff for dinner or hit the drive-thru because we didn’t take a few minutes to plan? We’ve all done it, but it’s time to change. Using a Meal Planner helps you take 15 minutes to look at your personal calendar and match it to the days/meals. That’s it! Go to the store and plan the week. Eliminate those random stops that cost you more money because you got too busy to cook one night. 

The more we go to the store, the more we spend. We have several versions you can choose from. We are that passionate about it! Another, another, another, and I have even used a generic monthly calendar to make one before. They all work, just find one that works for you! Bonus one here! 

🥣 Search For Frugal Meals to Cook

Since you are meal planning, make sure to toss in some economical meals as well. Just cooking a couple of these a week will allow you to help fund that Emergency Account quickly. Check out 100 Frugal Dinner Ideas, 19 Black Bean Dinners, 15 Meatless Frugal Dinner Ideas or even 10 Weeks of Frugal Weekly Meal Plans! Given all of these recipe ideas, you can come up with more than a handful of ideas to shave a few bucks a week off of your grocery bill. 

💕 Frugal Date Night Ideas

Re-evaluate how you do date nights! We used to think that going to expensive dinners or events is what made a perfect date night. Then we realized that the memories and photos tend to be from when we went on bike rides, camping or hiking. Check out these 25 ideas to have fun and save money. Throw that extra dough into your Emergency Fund instead!

💸 Creative Ways to Save Money at Home

Check out 50+ Grocery Items to DIY Instead of Buy as another option to find some cash. You can do these right now to help you start saving that Emergency Fund.

💲 Frugal Skills to Build the Emergency Fund 

7 Old Fashioned Frugal Skills might be the one that works well for you. Looking back through the decades, these are tried and true ways to save big bucks if you are willing to put in a little bit of work. Remember, nothing comes for free! 

📱 Use Checkout 51 to Save More Money on Groceries

If you haven’t downloaded the app, Checkout 51, now is the time! How to Save Money Using Checkout 51 is a little bit of a goldmine! You simply check on your app what is on sale that you normally purchase, make the purchase and scan your receipt! It is that easy! 

💵 Making Frugal Choices By Swapping Items

Learn how to make a few of your own things instead of buying them like paper towels and facial wash! 5 Money-Saving Swaps for the Newly Frugal will show you five quick things you can do right now to start saving money to add to your new Emergency Fund. 

💸 Tips and Tricks for Saving

19 Tips and Tricks for Saving drives you to the most important areas of cutting back expenses in your home budget. These are the quick and frank lists that will provide a gentle nudge of a reminder on things we should be doing.

🥘 Inexpensive Freezer Meals 

Freezer Meals are a secret weapon for busy families! 10 Freezer Cooking Tips for Beginners has a great variety of recipes to start freezer meal prepping and see the savings come along.

Bonus One! Start out by using the Monthly and Yearly Financial Goals Worksheets! Write down your financial goals…this is the first one and writes out how you plan to achieve them. In this post, we showed you how to set up goals that are realistic and attainable. It all ties together! 

👛 No Spend Challenge Printable

Use the No Spend Challenge Printable to help you quickly start to save. By putting you and your family on a strict budget for just 30 days, you are able to capture money that would normally be flowing outside of the home via eating out, extra groceries, parties, girls night out and more. Stop the spending for 30 days to create the Emergency Fund needed for your home.

💻 Download Here

For personal use only

You are ready to jump-start so print off the printable and let’s get started saving right now. Let us know how you did and how it worked for you!