Managing Money

I did a post a little while back on the Cash Envelope System and wanted to revisit this topic and discuss whether it is working/ changes that I would like to make. Feel free to read my original post on the Envelope System here.

As I am in the midst of wedding planning, our budget more then ever needs to be adhered to if we are going to afford a wedding and a few family trips this year, so last night I decided to give myself a challenge (because having the flu and two small children isn't challenging enough.) I would make a new cash envelope system and this time stick to it for at least 31 days. I wrote down why my previous attempts at it didn't work and here's what I came up with:

- I didn't like the idea of carrying around so much cash in one location
- I would out of habit, reach for my debit card and pay for fuel, food, clothes etc instead of using cash
- I always forgot to withdraw cash and put it in the envelopes
- The tabs could use more relevancy to what I need the cash for

Going through each of the points on why it didn't work out on my first attempt, I decided to correct each point, make a new envelope system and give it another try. We pay the brunt of our bills online, but things such as: clothing, fuel, food, take out, and auto I would like to start paying careful attention to as they are easily under-budgeted.

 

I used a floral dress that I had bought for $5 from Kmart last year that didn't fit me and I was never too keen to wear, as well as a clutch/wallet that I have had for a few years and never use. I don't have a sewing machine so this entire project was done by hand and all in all took 3 hours (broken up around chores and children.)

 

Each pay I am going to take the budgeted amount out for each category and once that money is gone, that's it for that category. Although I am still figuring out how much we will need for fuel at this point. 

I have 5 cash envelopes built into the wallet along with 4 card holder spaces.

I haven't permanently labelled the envelopes at this point but I am going to simply put sticker labels on them so I may chop and change categories should I want/ need to. In regards to having lots of cash all in the one place, I won't be carrying it around with all the money in it. This is simply a 'holding device' for me to check and see how much money in each category I have left until our next pay.

Which do you prefer?

The Denim Pocket Edition

or the Black & Floral approach with a snap clip.

How do manage your money? Debit Card? Credit Card? Or do you use a system similar to the Cash envelope?

Feel free to pin this to Pinterest via clicking on the posts title, then scroll to the bottom of this post and the 'pin it' button will have appeared :)

Until Next Time,