So I’m looking for a little advice from my wonderful readers today!
I am thinking about starting the cash envelope system for budgeting my family’s expenses. My question is, have any of you ever done this? Did it work? About how long did it take for it to really work for your family? Any other tips would be wonderful, too!
If you don’t use the cash envelope system, do you have another way that you budget your family’s expenses? I would love to hear about it!
Thank you in advance!
I’m a 20-something stay-at-home mother and wife. I have an amazing husband, a beautiful daughter, two loving dogs, and a lazy cat. I wouldn’t change my life for anything! I love to read, listen to music, cook and blog!
Hi! 🙂 I haven’t used the cash envelope system, but we use mint.com. You can set up budgets for different categories and see where your money is going automatically. It’s similar to an envelope system, but harder to stick to unless you’re really disciplined. 🙂 Hope that helps!
We don’t use the envelope system, though we do track our monthly expenses the “old fashioned way” with pen and paper. I should probably look at an online version of the envelope system. We do have five savings accounts: An HSA for medical (set up through the hubby’s workplace), an emergency account (5% of monthly NET income goes there), a college account for the kids (about 5% goes there too — three kids and one starts college this fall) and a vacation account (I blogged about it here: https://familytravelsonabudget.blogspot.com/2012/04/estimating-expenses.html). Everything left over at the end of each month moves to a general savings account that we use to cover whatever is next — birthdays, Christmas, etc. and it does grow a little each year — we put more in than we take out! WOOT! I love a good budget.
Courtney… I did… many many moons ago use the envelope system. It took about three months to get the hang of it…and for me it worked great.. I knew where my money was at all times (in envelopes- lol!) and quite frankly the only reason that I can see why I had stopped using it was because i then went through a divorce (unrelated to the envelope system- lol!!) It was tight at first but after three months I was able to get into the swing of things. Hope this helps. I have also used Excel to make myself a budget.
I don’t do the envelope thing because ‘real money’ in my hands makes me want to spend it. In general I try to spend as little as possible, and it’s become easier with time.
I have done the envelope system but with only 2 envies. I for food and one for entertainment type things.
With food it forced us to use coupons and shop the sales. We didn’t splurge on items or always buy named brand.
Then with entertainment / non-essentials we used this so we would stop buying games, dvds, and shopping clearance. Stop us from buying things we really can live without. Our cable and internet came out of this envi each month. So we were reminded to use that. We don’t need the comforts of easier (Netflix, Hulu, tv on dvd, etc).
We also went prepaid with our cell phones. We actually have more for less. We now have txting, internet, plus talk minutes that meet our needs. With savings of over half of our former price.
We tried the cash envelope system but we ran into problems – forgetting to take envelopes with us, not having envelopes with us when we needed them… It’s hard to get used to if you are used to using debit cards. We now use a virtual envelope system at https://inzolo.com.
I’m lucky – hubby takes care of this – he uses the excel spread sheet. Good luck with your envelope method – love to hear how it goes.
Leigh
http://www.oneandoneequalstwinfun.com
We have have gotten rid of all our credit cards and have lived without them for years. It’s been the best move we have ever done! And we don’t have to worry when the phone rings. Being in debt is nothing short of being in slavery….esp with the high finance charges