We could all do with a nifty trick to save us hundreds of dollars after the festive season. Let's face it, we've spent the last few weeks buying presents for our loved ones and for all the Secret Santas we've been roped into - and it's probably made a significant dip in our bank balance.

If you can relate, you might benefit from the $0.01 challenge - as it could save you an incredible $650 by Christmas 2020. I mean, look at it like this, it could really help you out when the next festive period rolls around.

So what exactly is the $0.01 challenge?

Well, it's a pretty simple yet ingenious way to save $667 over a year by putting aside a small portion of your cash each day - starting with $0.00 and gradually adding more to the original amount. By saving small amounts of money every day for 365 days, you'll build up your savings while doing very little for it.

Or you could be lucky enough to find money in an abandoned soda machine! In fact, a father and son discovered hundreds of dollars hidden in this abandoned vending machine:

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How does the $0.01 challenge work?

On the first day, you'll put aside $0.01 and on the days following, put aside the amount equivalent to the day:

Day 1: Put aside $0.01

Day 2: Put aside $0.02

Day 3: Put aside $0.03

Continue until...

Day 100: Put aside $1.00

Day 101: Put aside $1.01

Day 102: Put aside $1.02

Meet the woman who goes to extreme lengths to save money including peeing in a jar so she doesn't have to flush the toilet:

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Double it on day 200...

Day 200: Put aside $2.00

Day 201: Put aside $2.01

Day 202: Put aside $2.02

And continue until the 300th day...

Day 300: Put in $3.00

Day 301: Put in $3.01

Day 302: Put in $3.02

On the last day of the year (31 December) add £3.65 to your savings and you should end up with £667.95 in total.

Financial gurus, to us millennials, are full of rubbish. Apparently, we're supposed to accept low-paying and unpaid work in order to climb the ranks of a company, but at the same time, we should be investing in the stock market by age 25, saving money for retirement from our first salary, and by age 35, we should have double our salary in straight liquid cash savings. Want to have kids? Well, then you just need a higher salary. A much, much higher salary. It costs an estimated 14,000 dollars to raise a child, so add that to the annual price of an apartment, which is about just as much as the cost of a child in a big city in New York, and you're barely afloat with 30,000 a year! And that doesn't include transportation, groceries, any money for ridiculously over-expensive healthcare plans... yeah. So how far exactly does a million dollars go? Allegedly, you should be saving a small percentage of your income every year. This is how you get rich - you just save, save, save, an incremental amount every year, like our ape ancestors foraging into the forest for a handful of sticks a day, until you find you have enough to build a giant fort in the trees. So, how far does a million go if you're committed to saving 3 per cent of that figure every year? The thing is, the savings will constantly renew your money, since leaving money in the bank is the best way to grow it, or so I hear from people who have money in the bank. If you can live off 30,000 dollars a year, the million will last you for over sixty years. That's great, right? Well, not really. Remember earlier when we trashed that 30,000 a year salary? You can't run a family on that. Not even close. You can basically just live as a poor bachelor for your entire life and skate by. Not good. If you spend 50,000 dollars a year, your million will last you 32 years. Not bad! But 50,000 is still not enough to run a family on. And if you live in a big city, doubly so. One bad accident and you're stuck with a 50,000 price tag for a single surgery. That'll literally pull a year out of your life. So try spending 75,000 a year. That's not bad for a lifelong fixed salary - it can work. But that million will only last for 18 years. Then, it's back to the job boards. Ugh. Also, good luck paying for your kids' college. So, let's try spending 100,000 a year. That'll last you 13 years. Then, once again, it's back to the grind. And that's if you save and ration off your income! Most people won't do anything of the sort. Most people will start off with a massive vacation and blow a year's salary in a few months. Which is okay. Were we meant to live this life as penny-pinching primates? It would take me decades upon decades to earn a million dollars. And that would only last me under twenty years if I wanted to spend the amount I'd need to spend to live comfortably and/or have a family! So, after that magic million, you still have to work for 40 plus years for a living. Thanks, Obama (or Alan Greenspan or Lloyd Blankfein or any of the other suckers who crashed the economy, Obama did bail 'em out though)!

Saving money is a challenge at the best of times. While we all should have a little kept back for a rainy day, more often than not, our present lives have financial demands that are nigh impossible to ignore.

That's why, if you're a millennial, in particular, your savings will likely be pitiful - if they even exist.

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But that doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try to save. Even if you do so realistically. And while there's a lot of apps out there that offer to keep back the equivalent of a coffee and whatnot, now you could do so using the world's smallest piggy bank.

Standing at a mere inch tall, this tiny piggy bank gives you the realistic goal of saving just a single coin.

The world's smallest piggy bank is available in eight colors, bearing a range of expressions from happy to, well, constipated.

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However, if you were thinking of buying a tiny piggy bank for yourself or a friend, I'm afraid you're going to end up with quite the collection on your hands as, at the moment, they can only be purchased in bulk, priced at $14 for 100 piggy banks.

Hilariously, this means that you'd have to fill 14,000 of the banks (assuming they can hold nothing bigger than a cent) to buy a bag of them.

Or, if you happen to be Amazon CEO Jeff Bozo and have a net worth of $109.2 billion, you'd need 10.9 trillion tiny piggy banks to store it.

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Needless to say, this means that these piggy banks aren't ideal for saving up your pennies in the most literal way possible.

If, for example, you have your eye on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, you'd need to save up $59.99 (£49.99), equating to 5,999 piggy banks at a cost of $80. A little counterproductive, admittedly.

Some of the biggest savings you can make often come from the smallest purchases. Making a small change to your day-to-day routine can end up making your paycheque go much further, as long as you put the time and effort in. After all, walking instead of taking the bus doesn't save you much, but if that's a daily journey it'll all add up by the end of the month.

Sascha Farley, a mother-of-three from Sydney, Australia, figured out how to make some serious savings by only making a few changes. The 28-year-old has been using simple meal-prepping techniques for the last two years, and has managed to lose four stone and save thousands over this period - claiming she has saved over $10,000 AUD ($7,000 US) just by changing her food shop.

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It was after she gave birth to her first child that she decided to make a change, hoping to get her diet back on track. In September 2016 Sascha opted for some simple recipes from meal plan sites such as 'Healthy Mummy,' and while she found it was expensive to begin with, once all the essentials were in place it ended up being more cost-effective.

"The first few shops I did in the first month were really expensive but once I had all the pantry staples my bill cut in half," she told Femail. Sascha will regularly buy fruit, vegetables, and meat, but the bulk of her food comes from tins, and some essentials that she'll stock up on every six weeks.

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"I won't always stick to the exact vegetables listed in the app recipes if they're expensive when I get to the supermarket - especially if it's a green vegetable that will taste similar to other veg," she told Femail. "I'll buy frozen or tinned vegetables too if I have to to keep the cost down. Then the fruit is whatever is on sale and in season."

Sascha has said that she will spend around $80 to $120 ($56-84) a week, which includes all food and household items for a family of five - including a newborn baby. She has worked out that she saves around $100 ($70) a week, and $10,400 ($7,400) over the two years she's been keeping to this schedule.

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She apparently spends around an hour and a half in the kitchen each week to put the meals together, making the likes of beef san choy bow, spaghetti bolognese and pumpkin and feta frittata, recipes found on the Healthy Mummy app. Making sure she counts the calories too, she's reportedly lost around 30 kg since she started.

"The kids also east most of the things we eat but I'll always keep a healthy mac and cheese sauce in the freezer that I know I can put with pasta at any time and they will eat," she said. "Or I can make pick plates for them with a random assortment of platter items and they'll enjoy that too."

It just goes to show that a little can go a long way!

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