How To Make Microsaving Work For You (Part 1)

Updated

Read Part 2 (How to Microinvest) here.

Microsaving is just how it sounds. Taking micro (small) amounts of money + savings. There are lots of ways to save out there and you may have heard of some, like the $5 challenge or one of my favorites, the Weekday Number Challenge. There’s your basic weekly or bi-weekly savings transfers or putting money in a jar. Whatever works is the best thing you should do!

This post contains an affiliate link. This means I may earn a commission or bonus if you click on the link and open an account.

The benefit of microsaving is that it builds a habit while building savings. The amount isn’t as important as establishing the idea. The habit. Ignore the messages that tell you that you can’t do this hard thing. That’s why microsaving is a great way to for people who are neurodivergent or who have a disability or who were never taught to save. So a lot of mindset work needs to go into the understanding that you DESERVE to develop a habit that serves you.

And that’s why we begin here. You need a place to begin, and if that means starting small, microsaving is a great way to get started!

Microsaving is a great way to save when you:

• are living paycheck to paycheck
• are disabled (visible and invisible disabilities)
• are neurodivergent
• want to add another challenge to your savings goals, and
• need motivation to start saving

Do an online search for “how much should I have in savings?” and you’ll get hundreds, even thousands of answers. Many of these replies will tell you to have three to six months’ worth of expenses saved, or they’ll tell you that you have to have $1000 saved for an emergency. Or whatever. They don’t take into account the reality of our lives these days, with inflation holding steady and prices increasing. Not every savings system is feasible or accessible to us.

Unless someone inherited or won their money, they started at $0 when they started their savings journey. Some people started with negative numbers. Maybe that’s you.

Which brings you to this. How do I start saving with $0?

First we’ll talk about setting up a place for your savings to live where your money will make money. Then you’ll read the seven ways to microsave. Choose one way or choose them all. Whatever. Just get started. I do all seven because I like to challenge myself to see if I can save more money each year.

Note: The last challenge will also show up in Part 2 of this two-part series of microsaving, but with a twist.

Your Money Needs A Home

When you start microsaving, you need a place to park your dinero. First, open a high-yield savings account. If you look at any of my blog posts or social media, you’ll see that I use and recommend Ally Bank. Out of the three online banks I’ve used, this one is my favorite. Ally’s checking and savings accounts are free. They compound interest daily. As of this writing, their interest rate is 3.3%. (The interest rate is always going to be better than your local bank or credit union.)

Bonus: If you decide to go with Ally, you can use my code for a special incentive. This is an affiliate link and I may receive a cash reward if you complete the account requirements.

Investopedia, Bankrate and NerdWallet have monthly updates on all types of high-yield savings accounts. Read through for current rates and features. The main things you want to look for in an online account is that it’s FDIC-insured and there are NO FEES.

OK, let’s get on with our microsaving ideas!

1. Payroll Deduction

Tell your payroll department to direct deposit into savings. How much? That depends on your current spending habits and responsibilities. Can you start with $1? $5? There is no best amount, other than what YOU can afford. So start there.

If you’re embarrassed and think $5 is too little, don’t overthink it. This is your money. Money that you earn with your sweat, tears and labor. Can’t think of the perfect amount? Try your hourly rate or your birthdate. Being creative will also help remember how much you’re saving.

Whatever amount you choose, it’s your business and not your mom’s, your cousin’s or your friend’s. Remember, there’s no perfect number to start with, no matter what personal finance experts say.

And you can always change it! Which you will eventually, because the more you build the habit, the more excited you’ll get watching the money grow. Compound interest is fun to watch in real time!

After you’ve done this, put a note in your planner, online calendar or on a Post-It note on your mirror that says REVISIT PAYROLL SAVINGS DEDUCTION and have it coincide with an important date, such as your birthday or a dental appointment.

Ask yourself:

1. Can I increase this amount by X amount? If yes, direct payroll to increase the amount
2. Can I reduce or eliminate an expense that isn’t serving me, and transfer that money to savings? If yes, cancel the expense and move the money

2. The Weekday Number Savings Challenge

This is probably my favorite, because it’s kinda like a game.

It works like this.

Pick one day of the week to check your balance. Pick a number between 1 and 9. My number is 2 because my birthday is in February and February is the second month. On your chosen day, check your balance and if the balance ends in your number, transfer that amount to savings in dollars.

Here’s an example:

Day of the week: Monday

Number between 1 and 9: 2

Bank balance: $387.92 (the balance ends in 2)

Transfer amount: $2

To increase the chances of a transfer, check your balance daily instead of weekly. And make a transfer if your chosen number shows up anywhere in your balance.

Here’s an example:

Check balance every day of the week

Number between 1 and 9: 2

Bank balance: $422.56 (balance includes a 2)

Transfer amount: $2

3. That Piggy Bank From Childhood

Remember when you were a kid and you’d stuff coins into a piggy bank to save up for a toy? Or candy? (Maybe that’s a Boomer or Gen X thing!) All those coins added up to a few dollars that you could spend on random trinkets or to have money when you went out.

That was microsaving! See, you did it and didn’t even realize it. And now you’re an adult and maybe you’re wondering why you’re back in your youth, but hey, times are hard. So pull out that little coin bank or whatever you used and start putting in those coins. Like, literally count your coins!

A friend went to London about 15 years ago and brought back that little red post box coin bank and I use it. If I find money on the street or in the auto checkout, I’ll stuff it in my pocket or wallet and put it in my little bank. You can do this too.

Depending on how much you collect, try to make a deposit at least monthly. Take it to the bank, count it out and even if it’s $2, put it in your checking account. Then immediately schedule a transfer for that amount into your high-yield savings account.

Here’s another way I save random bills and coins, in an acrylic box I bought at Goodwill. Sometimes I’ll take it around the house and rattle it in people’s faces and ask them to make a deposit. My kids always roll their eyes, but I know they’re impressed when I count it all out and show them how much money we (or rather, I) collected!

4. $5 Challenge

This is the least used of all my savings habits. It’s mostly because I rarely use cash and when I do have it, I just put it in my little clear box. But this is a great way to save money, especially if you use cash. If you use the cash envelope method of saving and spending, you probably come across $5 bills often enough.

With this, grab a jar and put a label and stickers on it. Every time you have a $5 bill in your paws, stick it in the jar. Some people save hundreds of dollars using this method. I learned this method from Kumiko Love (The Budget Mom). She’s a proponent of the cash envelope method of budgeting and she shares this saving tip on her social media.

As with collecting coins, make a monthly trip to deposit this money into your checking account and schedule an immediate transfer to your online savings. Even if it’s $5. It doesn’t matter how small. You want that money to earn interest!

And that’s the point of microsaving. $5 here and $2 there. It all adds up. Literally. Like, I’m terrible at math but I can tell you that adding $5 to $2 makes $7 and with interest, that money GROWS. Microsaving is all about little bits and pieces that fit together to make a bigger piece.

5. Round-ups

You may have heard of Acorns, the company that rounds up your purchases to the next dollar and invests the difference for you. That’s all well and good, except for the fees. On their lowest plan, they charge $3/month which turns into $36/year. To do something that I get done for free with my online bank. Bank of America has a program to do this too, called Keep the Change. Except that Bank of America has stupid rules for its savings accounts, with their requirements and fees and rules.

That’s why I loooove my online bank. In 2025, they rounded up $72.31 to put into my savings. And the crazy thing is that I rarely use that checking account because my direct deposit for work goes into my local credit union. If I used my Ally checking as my main checking account/direct deposit account, that number would be much higher.

But the point I’m trying to make is that if you go with an online bank that offers this feature, this is another way (make sure it’s free!) to make microsavings work for you. That $72.31 that they rounded up and put into my savings was easy and I didn’t feel the pinch. And that money made money! Because compound interest is fun!

So while you’re researching online banks and savings accounts, look for these kinds of features that help you build savings in a way that’s sustainable. Imagine having $72, plus your microsavings of $2 here and $6 there all adding up. This helps your brain because as it begins to see bigger numbers, you begin to get motivated. And that leads to more savings and more money!

6. Connect Your Apps

I started selling regularly on eBay around 2007. I stopped when it got to be too much, between caregiving and an outside-the-home job. But I haven’t lost my desire to sell and I still sell once in a while on eBay and on other places like Facebook Marketplace.

And once Venmo and Zelle came on the scene, I connected them to my high-yield savings so that when I sold something, the funds would go directly into savings. (Oh, and I don’t use the expedited feature on Venmo to get my money there faster.)

Sometimes I get paid in cash, and when I do, I just stick the money in my acrylic box. But more often than not, I get paid via Venmo, so as soon as the payment goes through, I initiate a transfer.

So connect your apps to your online savings. This is a sort of roundabout way to microsave. Venmo allows you to connect a few accounts, so when you get paid for selling that old chair or that box of old LPs, make sure you initiate a transfer to your online savings right away. You also don’t want to be leaving your money in Venmo because 1) Venmo is not a bank and your money isn’t FDIC-insured; and 2) it keeps you from spending it.

7. Make $1378 With The 52-Week Challenge

I have my brokerage, IRA and Roth IRA accounts at Fidelity. So do my kids. I used to use Schwab, which is another low-cost brokerage. Both are good and have easy entry into their investing products. One of my best friends is a money coach and uses Schwab because they worked there for a year. It’s what they recommend. Whatever you choose is up to you.

This year I’m doing the 52-Week Challenge with Fidelity. The way it works is that they’ll take out one dollar for each corresponding week of the year, from $1 to $52. So week 1 they take out $1, week 2 they take out $2 and so on. At the end of the year, I’ll have $1378. The one thing I had to think about was whether I wanted this money to go into my brokerage, my IRA or my Roth IRA. I already separately invest in my Roth IRA and to avoid going over the annual contribution limit, I directed Fidelity to deposit these funds into my brokerage account. A brokerage account is taxable, by the way.

This is a great way to microsave because 1) Small amounts are taken out of my account, with the maximum amount being $52 in the last week of the challenge; 2) It’s free; 3) You tell them where to put the money; 4) I can withdraw the money at any time without penalty; 5) Building the amount each week gets me in the habit of increasing my savings; 6) It’s a free service from Fidelity; and finally; 7) I don’t have to think about building my savings because it’s all automated.

Building The Habit

Now that we’ve gone through seven ways to microsave, let’s talk about building habits. An important thing to remember is that even if you’re saving $1 per paycheck or $1 per week, or whatever, the amount isn’t as important as the ACTION. Microsaving is the perfect way to start somewhere.

Let’s say you want to start the routine of going for a walk every day. Your end goal is to walk 45 minutes a day, five days a week.

But getting started is HARD. So you decide to create a pattern that includes movement. Maybe you take some time in the morning to stretch for five minutes. You do this every other day.

Then you move on to daily stretching.

Then daily stretching for 10 minutes.

Your body and your brain are learning that movement is something that you’re starting to do regularly.

Then you decide to walk to the end of the driveway, back and forth for five minutes every other day. Or maybe you do it for the length of your favorite song.

Then you decide to walk down the street for the length of an audiobook chapter.

The idea is that you start slowly so you don’t get too distracted by your surroundings or people in your surroundings.

The habit of walking took me a long time to develop. As a caregiver to both my mother and sister, I had to set boundaries and say, “This is my time.”

Habits don’t start overnight. Walking everyday for a month is going to make you drop 30 pounds during that month. But it can make you feel better physically and mentally, which could lead to bigger changes in your life.

Saving $10 a month isn’t going to make you wealthy. But adding to that $10 and watching that money grow can create motivation and a desire to build more. It’ll take time, but you did the hard part by getting started. It could take months, or even a year. Everyone’s different and there are no rules.

Put up a chart or a sticker or Post-It note every time you add to your savings. Make a note and celebrate when you increase your savings. Then in December, look back on where you were a year ago and see how much you’ve changed.

Microsaving can change your life and teach you things you’ve never dreamed.

Why Does Microsaving Work?

Microsaving works because it does two things: it helps you develop a habit that leads to building a savings fund.

It also works because it makes saving money easier by starting you off on small amounts, making it doable. This can be motivating. You take tiny, micro steps to save money for a goal, turning those micro steps into a decent wad of cash. This motivation can fuel a desire to increase savings. That’s how microsaving works, teeny tiny steps. And by putting your money into a high interest-bearing savings account, it will grow faster.

Just remember, though, that you are on YOUR timeline, not someone else’s. If it takes you a year or two to get to your goal, then that’s what it takes. You may have setbacks and it’ll be frustrating. You may even have to access some of those funds, which could set you back to $0. But that’s OK because if you did this once, the next time will be easier.

Get In Touch

If you want more help getting to a place where you feel confident and need someone to hold your hand, get in touch! I provide coaching in a safe space, free from judgment. I’ll cheer you as you take steps and be there for you when things don’t go as expected. Find out more by scheduling a free 30-minute strategy session today.