This woman's brilliant hack for saving £5,000 in six months is going viral

Saving money can be tough, and while there are lots of money saving tips out there - from going green to earning money from your wardrobe to collecting vouchers - it can often be difficult to make sure you put cash aside for a rainy day.

But what if there was a brilliant hack that promises to save you over £5,000 in just six months?

Well - it exists.

One woman has shared a genius way to help you put the pounds away with 'the 2020 envelope challenge' on Facebook, and it has now gone viral.

To get started, you need to buy 100 envelopes and label each of them from £1 to £100. Over 25 weeks, you're required to take four of the envelopes at random each week and put the amount of money written on the envelope inside, or you could transfer the sum from your bank account into a separate savings account to keep it separate and make it less likely you'll dip into it. For example, if you pick out the £5 envelope, that's how much you'll need to stash that day.

If you repeat this four times a week, at the end of the six months you'll have saved a staggering £5,050.

The maximum amount you'll have to put away one week is £394 (if you happen to pick the four envelopes with the largest numbers), and the minimum amount for the four smallest sums would be £10, so it's a good idea to make sure that they're sufficiently mixed up.

Saving almost £400 in a week may be difficult, so you could always reduce the number of envelopes you pull out and spread the savings over a longer timeframe, but in the end the huge amount will still be set aside.

Would you try this challenge to see how much you could save?

Let us know on Facebook or Twitter @marieclaireuk