Ladies, it’s time to grab your girlfriends, and start your own Women’s Saving Club! (We’re assuming you know all the good reasons as to WHY you should start one. If not, read here.)
Step by step, here’s how we started our club. Feel free to tweak and offer suggestions for other gals!
1. Make a list of gals you think would be interested. The more diversity, the better! It’s interesting to hear from women in different stages in their lives — the better able to equip you with experiences that you might encounter, or the better able for you to offer up your personal experience to someone else! Aim to have about eight in the club — you don’t want it too big, otherwise it can get a little unmanageable.
2. Send them an e-mail. Here’s some sample copy:
“I’ve been struck by a little bit of practical inspiration and have decided to start a Women’s Savings Club.
What is a Women’s Savings Club, you might ask? Well, it’s a bit like this: Let’s take the feel of a book club, toss in a dash of smarts from investment clubs and add our own little money-conscious twist for…Women’s Saving Club! We’re sending this to you not because we think you’re a spendthrift and need to sock away some money for retirement, but because you’re a cool gal with ambition, initiative and an inclination toward sustainability, and we could all learn something from you.
Here’s how it will work, though I’m open to other ideas:
- Meet monthly at a club member’s house!
- Everyone brings appetizers/drinks made from things that have been in your pantry/fridge/freezer forever.
- Pick an item to trade each time – magazines, books, CDs, accessories, (other ideas here) — and everyone brings those items and trades. Or…pick a craft to do — like bringing old cards, sharing and re-making them into a year’s supply of birthday cards. Or… ??
- We’ll pick a topic to discuss, research it prior to meeting and then come to work on it together. Besides a constant theme of sharing savings ideas and tools to use (e.g. smartypig.com and mint.com), other potential themes on our agenda can include banks with high CD rates, setting up an e-Trade account, how to refinance your house/second home, where to sell your old wedding dress, umbrella insurance policies and basically anything we’re interested in at the moment!
- To participate, you have to set your own financial/saving goal. Starting with the first club meeting, you’ll share the goal, and then as we progress we’ll offer updates toward reaching our goals!
- Not only will we be mini financial experts, but we’ll be supporting and educating each other. We’ll then grow up to be smart, savvy girlfriends, wives, daughters and mothers!
- Please RSVP. If you can make it, great. If you can’t make it, but are still interested, please note that. If you’re not interested or if this isn’t the right time for you, that’s fine too, just let us know.
Sincerely,
Your Name Here”
3. Once you have a group of committed gals, set some ground rules. Here are ours: Women’s Savings Club Overview (Word doc).
4. Have your first meeting! (Might also be good to always have a set date to meet. We meet the third Tuesday of the month!) Sample agenda:
- 6:30-6:45 Catch up/eat
- 6:45-7:15 Goal Update (remember to bring your written goals)
- 7:15-7:45 How have you made money work for you, how do you want money to work for you? (Good examples/experiences with investing, saving, IRA, 401K tricks, etc. Katie and I will kick off the discussion and everyone feel free to jump in.)
- 7:45-8:15 Resource Sharing: Blog, Christy explains her budget, Kathryn resources, and I think some gals have some others
- 8:15-8:30 Next steps/Wrap up/Swap CDs
Also, ask your club members to come up with topics of interest of them to kick off the discussion. It’s helpful to send the topic in advance of the meeting so that club members can spend some time thinking about it. Need help starting to think of topics? Click here.
5. At each meeting, appoint someone to be the notetaker to help document each gal’s progress toward their goals. Click here for a sample goal tracking spreadsheet.
6. Last, but not least, tell us when you’ve started a club! We want to be sure to offer you cool, new tips and exciting news as we go along this money-saving experiment.
We’ve learned so much from the gals in our club and know you’ll learn from your friends. Plus, we’re here if you ever need ideas, inspiration or want to chat. WomensSavingClub@gmail.com
Oh yeah, be sure to have fun! Happy saving together!
