I like the Tesco tagline “Every Little Helps”. It’s true! And I’d like to offer you a financial challenge to prove it. It should be a win-win for you.

Try becoming a millionaire overnight. Hoping for a lottery win or an inheritance is, well, hoping! But can you get there if you start a business? Sure! Lots of people have done it. Step by step. Customer by customer. Sale by sale. The point is, it all adds up.

You can do the same with savings and improve your financial health, right? Theory’s great, but the reality of it is that there seems to always be something more urgent, more important. So putting money into your pension pot or savings account often gets de-prioritised. If you’re young you justify it with low earnings, student loans that need paying off and the all-encompassing “there’s time, why worry now?” Then there’s family, buying a house, paying the mortgage, etc.

So here’s the challenge:

Step 1. Go over your New Year’s resolutions or come up with one that centers on a vice which impacts your health or the health of others. Let’s say smoking or drinking too many sugary drinks.

Step 2. Estimate how much you spend on that per week. Let’s stick with the smoking example. Say we’re talking £6 per pack of cigarettes per day. That’s 7 packs a week, so £42.

Step 3. Your resolution is to live healthier. Ideally, you’d quit altogether, but let’s assume you decide to reduce your smoking by a just third. That’s £14 per week you won’t be spending on a bad habit.

Step 4. Over a month that adds up to £56 (£14/week x 4 weeks). Let’s do something virtuous and invest that money.

Here’s the thing. You can start a regular savings account (including an ISA) or retirement plan (a SIPP) with as little as £25 per month. And guess what? Now that you’ve decided to live a healthier life, you’ve got more than double that available! Sounds like a win-win to me. You’re being virtuous all round.

The big question is, how does that improve your financial health? An easy way to figure that out is to use the freely available online calculators of financial product providers, like this Regular Savings Calculator.

Let’s plug in the following:

• Savings each month: £56
• Lump sum: £0
• Time: 10 years
• Growth rate: 7% (Hargreaves points out that for longer term investments 7% growth is considered average)

The calculator says that with a monthly contribution of £56, after 10 years the savings pot could be worth £9,579. Now, over that 10 years, the monthly contributions add up to £6,720 (i.e. £56 x 12 months x 10 years). This means, you would have made £2,859 from the growth of your investment. That’s 43% of the sum of the contributions. Not bad!

But there’s more! If you stick with it for longer, the results are even more impressive. Over a 20 year period, the earned component exceeds what you put in by £1,500! The longer you let your money grow, the harder your money works for you. Try 30 years.

Here’s the catch. You need to start investing.

Wary of putting money into anything but cash? Perhaps we can help. The topics in this blog are covered in The Power of Pocket Money and Money Never Sleeps.