Saving can be hard at the best of times, but in the current tough economic climate, the temptation to skip a month and spend the cash seems to be overpowering millions of us.

A recent report by Callcredit, the credit reference agency, has found that a quarter of adults have cut back on saving - or abandoned it all together - in the past six months.

We haven't fallen out of love with saving, says Kevin Mountford, of Moneysupermarket.com, the comparison website, it's just that rising prices and spiralling bills mean we have less free income, and we don't have the means to save as much as we'd like.

But help is at hand. Here are ten quirky and ingenious schemes that that will allow you to build up a tidy nest egg - with little or no effort.

Sweeping

Find out if your bank of building society offers a monthly “sweep” facility. This means that whatever is left in your current account on the day before payday can be transferred into a savings account without you having to lift a finger.

Abbey, HSBC, First Direct, the Co-operative and Intelligent Finance will all set up a “sweep” on your account free, while Royal Bank of Scotland and NatWest charge an annual fee of £35. Some banks will ask you to set the amount to move over (essentially making it a standing order), while others will set up weekly or even daily transfers, although you may have to pay an extra fee.

Save the change

Customers at Lloyds TSB can sign up to a unique saving scheme called Save The Change, which rounds up debit card purchases to the nearest pound and saves the difference in a designated savings account. For example, if you buy a sandwich for £1.70, the bank will deduct £2 from your current account, with 30p going into your savings account.

Children's perks

When parents sign up to KidStart.co.uk, they earn up to 20 per cent back on purchases made on their debit or credit cards at hundreds of online or high-street retailers. This cash is deposited in either a Child Trust Fund or a nominated children's savings account. It is free to join, and is also open to grandparents or friends.

Cashback credit cards

Credit cards that reward you with money back have been on the market for a while, but Leeds Building Society is the only provider to return the cash by cheque, rather than as a credit on your card's account. All you have to do is deposit the money in a savings account. The Leeds Building Society Cashback Mastercard has an APR of 17.9 per cent and offers 0.5 per cent cashback on all purchases.

At the supermarket

If your supermarket shopping comes to less than you've budgeted for, ask the cashier to add the difference to your savings account. Both Tesco and Sainsbury's allow customers with one of their savings products to pay money into their accounts at the tills with the swipe of a debit card.

Collect your reward

The Co-operative membership scheme rewards regular customers with a cash dividend twice a year in exchange for the points they have collected across the group's finance, travel, funeral and food divisions. The cash can be paid directly into a savings account, which doesn't have to be with the Co-op. Last year the Co-operative's 2.5 million members were paid 1.43p per point.

Regular savers

Sign up and a standing order will take between £20 and £250 from your current account to a regular saver account, often with excellent rates. Abbey's Fixed Monthly Saver, for example, promises a 7.25 per cent return on your cash for 12 months.

Deposit for your first home

NatWest is helping first-time buyers with a new account that rewards you with cash just for saving for a deposit.

The First Home Saver Account promises to pay £125 on savings of £500, rising to £5,000 on savings of £50,000. The account has to be open for at least six months before you seal your first house deal, and regular payments of at least £50 have to be made.

The best bit is that you can transfer savings you have built up already into the account and still earn the cashback. The only drawback? To collect the money, you have to take out a mortgage from NatWest, which might not offer the best deal for you.

High-interest current accounts

A high-interest current account means that your money is working for you without you having to do anything. Standard current accounts have rates of only 0.1 per cent, but Halifax pays 5.12 per cent on balances of up to £2,500 with its High-Interest Current Account. Unlike other current accounts boasting attractive rates, the interest you receive from Halifax won't fall after the first year.

Loose change

Last but not least, whether you keep it in a shoe box or a pink pig, loose change can grow into a healthy sum.

Just 50p a day adds up to £182 a year. Transfer this annually into a high-interest savings account with a rate of 7 per cent, and your spare coppers and silver will turn into £2,690 after ten years, or £38,876 after 40.

Or try cutting back on your morning coffee. Malcolm Cuthbert, of Killik & Co, a financial planner, says that if 35-year-olds put the £1.80 spent on a daily cup of coffee into their pension pots instead, at 65 they would receive £3,843 more every year for the rest of their lives.

Great rates from overseas banks

An invasion of overseas banks has helped to push up interest rates on deposit accounts, with the fight to offer table-topping rates escalating this week.

Kaupthing Edge, the internet-only and phone savings provider owned by the Icelandic bank Kaupthing, has announced a new one-year fixed-rate bond paying 7.01 per cent on balances from £1,000 to £2 million.

The bond is jostling for pole position with two other fixed-rate products promising high returns. Arch-rival Icesave, owned by the Icelandic bank Landsbanki, is offering the same rate of 7.01 per cent to new savers.

The top spot, however, goes to FirstSave, an internet-only provider owned by First Bank of Nigeria. It takes the crown with a massive 7.1 per cent rate on a 12-month fixed bond. Agile savers who can transfer £10,000 into the FirstSave bond will make a whopping £710 after a year, before tax is deducted.

The bonds are the first stand-alone products to break through the 7 per cent barrier since last September.

Case Study

Elaine and Anthony Sharp signed up to KidStart two months ago to save for Louisa, their ten-month-old daughter.

Last week the couple, who live in Barnes, southwest London, spent £156 at Mothercare on a child seat and a safety gate.

Purchases from Mothercare earn 5 per cent cashback, so £7.80 was added to a Child Trust Fund they opened with F&C when Louisa was born. “It is such an excellent idea,” says Mrs Sharp. “Almost every time we use our cards to buy something, we are also contributing to our daughter's savings.”