Mum Shares Genius Envelope Hack For Saving £5,050 In Six Months

A woman on Facebook has shared a genius idea to save over £5,000 in just six months.

Dubbed the '2020 Envelope Challenge' the hack has gone viral online - and all you'll need is a set of 100 envelopes, labelled from £1 to £100.

So how does it work? Well, it's pretty easy. All you need to do is pull out four envelopes a week at random (it's probably a good idea to shuffle them first) for 25 weeks.

For each envelope you withdraw from the pile, you then need to deposit the amount stated on the front of the envelope. So if you pull out £1, pop a quid in the envelope, and if you pull out £100, you'll need to stick that in there, too.

Remember, you could be putting up to £394 a week away, so it's a genius way of saving cash if you have the money there to save, but struggle with your spending habits.

Of course, we don't all have that kind of disposable income, so you could try the hack over a longer period (for example, withdrawing two envelopes a week instead of four) but obviously this will take longer to save.

Once you reach the 25 week mark, if you've saved everything as you should, you'll have a tidy sum of £5,050!

The trick was originally developed in the 18th century by Carl Friedrich Gauss, a German mathematician who figured if you split the numbers 1 to 50 and 51 to 100 into two groups and add them together, you could make 101.

For example, one plus 100 equals 101 as does two plus 99. From this, he deduced the total of both groups is 50 multiplied by 101 - which makes 5,050 (aka the amount you'll be saving).

The woman who shared the trick on Facebook explained it could even help you save for a house. "If you have a three-year plan to buy a house, you could have a little over $30,000 (£23,000) for a down payment by doing this," she said.

Meanwhile, others vowed to try out the hack themselves, with several tagging friends and family to encourage them to do the same.

It must be the best feeling when you finally hit that 25-week mark! We're inspired to give it a go, but we may need to stick to two envelopes a week instead of four...