Surest way to save for your dream vacation

We all have something in mind that we dream of getting for ourselves or for someone else. Maybe you want to get yourself a new laptop, take a course, go on vacation with your significant other, upgrade your TV, move into a posh estate, the list is endless.

With such big goals in mind, it’s very important to have a good savings plan that helps you track how much you are putting away and shows you how close you are to achieving your goal. If you don’t have one, you might never realize your dream.

Kenya’s leading mobile service provider, Safaricom, understands that saving is a hard task for many people and that’s why they developed the M-Shwari 52-Week Challenge to help you double your savings which will in turn help you to achieve your dream.

The idea behind it is to deposit some money into your M-Shwari account every, week from the 1st week of January to the last week of December. The amount that you put away increases by Ksh 50 every week. For instance, if you save Ksh 50 this week, you’ll save Ksh 100 next week, Ksh 150 the week after that and so on.

If you are disciplined and adhere to the savings schedule, you’ll have Ksh 68,900 or more at the end of the year which will help you to buy what you wanted or go on a much-needed holiday after a long year of hard work.

You must be wondering what to do if you just learnt of this challenge which implies that you did not start saving from the first week of January. No need to worry. What I love most about the 52-week challenge is that it’s never too late to start.

Look at it like this, we are in the last week of April, which is the 16th week of the year. If you didn’t start saving at the beginning of the year, you can put away Ksh 6,800 at the end of the week so as to compensate for the weeks that you didn’t save. Next week you can save Ksh 850 then you can put away Ksh 900 the week after that and so on.

But then again, you can decide to be more aggressive. For instance, say you’ve had a good week and you have some extra money. You can decide that you’ll save Ksh 200 more so that you can have more money at the end of the year.

The best part about the M-Shwari 52-week challenge is that it has weekly reminder that will remind you how much you are supposed to save in a certain week. It also has percentage indicators that will show you how far you are from achieving your goal. This makes it easier to track your savings.

You can also save in reverse which means that you start with the difficult weeks as you work your way to the easier weeks. You can also choose to automate the service and enjoy your peace of mind while working towards your goal.

All deposits on M-Shwari will earn an interest rate of 7% per annum if you don’t touch your savings which means that you’ll have more money at the end of the year.

Follow the steps below to lock your savings account for the M-Shwari 52 week saving challenge:

Go to M-PESA on My Safaricom App or from your sim tool kit, select Loans and Savings, select M-Shwari, select Lock Savings Account, select Open Lock Account, Set your target at min Ksh. 68,900 or more, set period at 12 months, set your account to save from M-PESA or M-Shwari.