Six Months of Golf Savings—all at Once
With our son’s entrance exams and a temporary job keeping me busy, I hadn’t had much time to sit down and think about golf.
We last settled up in January. So, finally, I worked out everything we owed from February through July.
The mountain of coins in the background belongs to GOL Husband’s separate coin collection. It comes in handy for making change and paying out rewards from our golf savings jar!
I opened the scorekeeping app on my iPhone and started adding things up.
| Month | GOL Husband: Amount Added | Rounds | GOL Yome: Amount Added | Rounds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| February | ¥1,000 | 1 | — | 0 |
| March | ¥1,600 | 3 | ¥1,900 | 3 |
| April | ¥1,300 | 4 | ¥1,300 | 2 |
| May | ¥2,500 | 4 | ¥2,100 | 5 |
| June | ¥2,100 | 3 | ¥1,500 | 2 |
| July | ¥1,900 | 3 | — | 0 |
| Total | ¥10,400 | 18 | ¥6,800 | 12 |
A whopping ¥17,200 added in just six months!
Wonderful news for the savings jar. Less wonderful for our wallets.
GOL Husband contributed ¥10,400 over 18 rounds—just under ¥600 per round.
My total was ¥6,800 over 12 rounds. Also just under ¥600 per round.
At least we’re evenly matched at something!
A Personal Best Earns You ¥1,000
Our golf savings game isn’t all about paying in.
Set a new personal best, and you get ¥1,000 from the jar. Beat your season’s best, and you get ¥300.
The idea is simple: golfing mishaps add money to the jar, while good results earn a little reward.
And yet… we both had rounds where we improved our best scores, and we still ended up putting in this much money!
By the end, I had run out of ¥1,000 notes in my wallet.
So a restaurant gift card ended up going into the savings jar instead.
That counts… right?
¥100 for a Three-Putt: Our Biggest Money-Maker
We have quite a few rules for our little game.
These are our own household rules, of course—nothing to do with official golf rules!
For reference, our season’s best and personal-best scores at the time were:
| Best Score | GOL Yome | GOL Husband |
|---|---|---|
| Season’s best | 95 | 85 |
| Personal best | 95 | 85 |
And here’s how the money moves:
| What Happens | GOL Yome | GOL Husband |
|---|---|---|
| Hole-in-one | Take the whole pot! | Take the whole pot! |
| Eagle | Receive ¥500 | Receive ¥500 |
| Birdie | Receive ¥100 | Receive ¥100 |
| Triple bogey or worse | — | Put in ¥100 |
| Quadruple bogey or worse | Put in ¥100 | — |
| 10 strokes or more on one hole | Put in ¥500 | Put in ¥500 |
| Three putts or more on one hole | Put in ¥100 | Put in ¥100 |
| Out of bounds (OB) | Put in ¥100 | Put in ¥100 |
| Round score of 110+ for GOL Yome / 100+ for GOL Husband | Put in ¥200 | Put in ¥200 |
| Round score of 120+ for GOL Yome / 110+ for GOL Husband | Put in ¥500 | Put in ¥500 |
| New season’s best | Receive ¥300 | Receive ¥300 |
| New personal best | Receive ¥1,000 | Receive ¥1,000 |
“Put in” means paying into our shared golf savings jar. “Receive” means taking a reward out of it.
Of all these rules, ¥100 for every hole with three or more putts is the one that really hurts!
I usually have at least five of those in a round. That’s ¥500 right there.
Neither of us hits out of bounds particularly often, so three-putts seem to be the main reason our little fund keeps growing.
Our golf savings have now reached ¥25,900.
If only our putting were improving as steadily as our savings!