Arguably, my favorite part of being the social media manager for PennyProfit is reading the stories submitted by our wonderful users. There is one story I just have not been able to get out of my head since I read it, Russ’s story.
Russ used PennyProfit in the most basic way that many of our users do, he rounded up his spare change and put it in a Vacation Jar. He set his jar with an open goal and let the platform do its thing. A few months later, he was prepping for his trip and pulled his savings from his jar. He was so thrilled to find he had over $250 in his account, which was more than enough to purchase a great quality backpack, as well as a few other travel essentials.
Now, Russ’s story sounds similar to many user’s experiences. His spare change was enough to fulfill his needs and dreams, however, the reason I adore Russ and his story is because rather than being satisfied with achieving his goal, Russ wanted more. Russ saw the potential and realized that by making two simple changes his savings would have grown so much more quickly. The two changes are:
1. Russ had his account set to round off his spare change, which is an average of $.50 saved per transaction, however, if he had customized his round-ups to be $1 he would have saved $500 in the same time frame! I think a lot of people are intimidated at the idea of customizing their round-ups, they feel as if they have to change it to something absurd like $5 or $10 in order to make extremely fast progress towards their goals, however, even just switching to $1 aids so much in building savings at a faster rate without feeling like a painful investment.
2. The second change Russ would have made was adding his wife to his Jar. With two people’s transactions rounding up rather than one, Russ would have been able to create a jar with double the savings in the same amount of time. This is amazing! Russ realized how impactful a Shared Jar can truly be.
Since then, Russ has implemented both of these changes on his account. He and his wife are both contributing to their goals, and they are doubling their savings by rounding up by $1 each time rather than just taking the excess change. I am so thrilled to see what benefits this will bring for them! I’m hoping in a few months we’ll have a Russ 2.0 Story that ends with them going on an even bigger, better vacation!
The cool thing about Russ’s story is anyone can implement his strategies. If your change isn’t accumulating as fast as you would like then think about creating a shared jar or increasing your round-up amounts and you too can reach your goal fast! And when you do, don’t forget to tell us!
