Have you ever thought about the power of a snowflake? Imagine a single snowflake. It’s tiny, and if it lands on your warm hand, it will melt quickly. Alone, it is powerless.
But when combined with other snowflakes, a single snowflake is powerful. It can accumulate into inches of beautiful, white snow. You can do a lot of things with several inches of snow. Build a snowman, have a snowball fight, ski. A single snowflake won’t give you that ability. But multiple snowflakes will.
It is the same way with snowflakes made of money. (Read the definition of a monetary snowflake here). Five cents here and there won’t do anything. But five cents combined with another five cents…and another…and another…can go far.
It can jumpstart your emergency fund, help you pay off your debt quickly, or boost your retirement savings.
So next time you find an extra five cents, whether it be on the ground, in your pocket, or from something you’ve sold on ebay, don’t mindlessly spend it. Save it and add to it. When enough snowflakes are collected to make an impact, use the money wisely.
For more information on snowflaking, see the following:
- Finding Snowflakes to Add to Your Snowball
- Make Sure Your Snowflakes Stay Snowflakes
- The Logistics of Snowflaking Extra Payments
What do you do with your snowflakes?
Photos by Martin Pettitt, ElationAviation, and jpctalbot.
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The concept of the snowflake is exactly what we are using to build our emergency fund. By themselves, those few dollars saved every month are not very much and not very powerful, but we are seeing how they do add up over time. We will never again fail to save even a few dollars each month. Snowflakes rock!
Great Analogy! I read your blog for myself but also because I’m a teacher and one of my units that I teach my teens is on managing money. I will be using this analogy – Thanks!
I use my coin sorter as kind of a snowball.
Each time I have change in my pocket, it goes into the sorter.
Before I know it, there’s $100 sittig there and I take it to the bank.
good point. I like the thinking behind this idea. If more of us could realise that just a little can eventually build to a lot, perhaps there wouldn’t be so much debt.
Happy Christmas Every One
Love it! When I was a teller for a short period of time I used to deposit my pocket change every week into my savings account. The other tellers always picked on me a little, but it really started to add up.
@TStrump & Nicki – That’s exactly how it should be done!
I snowfalke two ways: I never spend my change; instead I throw it in a Mason jar each day and when there’s enough I take it to the free coin counting machine at my bank and immediately deposit it in my savings account. That’s the only thing that’s in that account – my change. Amazing how it adds up.
Also, as soon as I come home from the grocery store, I transfer the amount I “saved” with coupons into my ing account I called “Snowflake”. My grocery store prints the amount I save with coupons on the bottom of the receipt, but until it’s in ing, it’s not savings, it’s just less money spent.
Both methods are small things, but over time, they really add up and I don’t miss the money at all.
i love this idea. My bank have a program called keep the change. So they round up my debit purchases to the nearest dollar and the difference goes directly into my savings account. Easy enough. I just started so I can’t wait to see how this pans out.