Martin Lewis shares ‘painless’ 1p method to easily save £667 in 2026

If you’re looking for an easy way to save a few hundred quid this year, Martin Lewis has you covered.

The Money Saving Expert (MSE) and his team have shared a straightforward and ‘relatively painless’ method that will allow people to save as much as £667 over the next 12 months.

And all you have to do is start by putting aside just 1p on January 1. 

The 53-year-old explained how to do it in his newsletter, saying it’s a ‘fun’ way to start the new year.

How to do the 1p saving challenge in 2026

You start off by saving 1p on January 1, and then you keep on adding to it each day. So you save what you saved the day before and add another penny to it each day.

So on January 2, you’d save your 1p and add 1p to save 2p, then for January 3, it would be 3p.

Continuing to do this each day throughout the year would mean that by December 31 in 2026, you’d be adding £3.65 to give you a total of £667.95. 

And if you forget to start right away, that’s ok, as you can easily catch up by just adding up the totals of each day you missed.

For instance, they explain: ‘If you join in on January 5, you could put 15p in your pot, then save 6p the following day. Likewise, if you start on 20 January, you could add £2.10 on your first day, then resume the challenge as normal on 21 January, when you’d save 21p.’

Those who need a little more help to keep track of things can also download or print off a table that MSE have made and tick off each box every day as you go. 

What’s the best way to save the money?

You can put physical cash into a jar or piggy bank every day, or transfer money into an online savings account in either small amounts (if your bank allows) or monthly amounts. 

‘While it might defeat the object of it being a daily challenge, you could put away the month’s total in one go if you prefer,’ the experts explain.

‘Alternatively, you could split it equally over 12 months and set up a standing order if you wish. In this case, you’ll need to set aside £55.67 a month (that’s a rounded-up figure for 12 equal instalments, meaning you get an extra 9p during the challenge if you use this method – don’t spend it all at once!).’

Those banking with Monzo will have it the easiest, as it allows you to increase the amount of your daily transfers into a separate virtual savings ‘pot’. The online bank even has its own version of the challenge, which you could get involved in from January 1.

The Money Saving Expert team adds: ‘While the concept is simple, what’s really important here is that you’re thinking about saving and trying to set some money aside – so if the traditional structure of the challenge doesn’t work for you, why not adapt it?

‘You could just use it as a way of emptying loose change from your pockets and mark off that figure on the tracker in no particular order. Have a dig down the back of the sofa, coat pockets and old handbags too!’

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