Cash Budget
Thursday, September 30, 2010
The hubs and I are starting an all cash budget TOMORROW. I have to tell you, he has been asking to do this for quite some time and I have been putting him off. We use a great excel budget and I promised we wouldn't go over the allotted amounts per category. Boy, was I wrong. There is something about that debit card that makes it just so darn easy to spend, spend, spend!
Dave Ramsay is the creater of using envelopes with pre-allotted amounts of cash in them for any extraneous category. We will be using envelopes for: my cash, hubs cash, groceries, trips, gas, and house fund. Obviously, we will continue having automatic withdrawal for pre-fixed payments such as cable and our mortgage.
Beth @ Design-a-Peele showed these cute envelopes today that she is trying out while using the all-cash system. So cute! You have to check them out.
I think the hardest part about spending cash will be the fact that when the money is gone, it's gone. There is no tweaking, no "oh well, we'll do it next month". I am excited to see how this next month goes. I will definitely keep in touch as to how it goes along the way!
9 comments:
Such a good idea! We need to do that! But it scares me too.
Girl, you can totally do it. We did it well this month for the first time ever! Don't be discouraged if the first month doesn't go well. Tweek things as you need to. When we first started it was frustrating because we always had to use more in cash for gas. So now we started doing gas back on the debit card. It works perfectly for us. But everyone is different! I was amazed this month. We always put money in savings right off the bat, but we had $300 left over...I didn't realize all the random little things we were spending money on!
We are getting ready to sit down and figure out how much cash goes to what. I'm so nervous to start this system but I know with a baby on the way it'll help out ALOT.
If you want to share (if not I completely understand) how did y'all figure out how much cash goes where?? This seems to be my biggest struggle when it comes to this system!
I love the cash holders too!! :)
Our friends do this method, and are doing great with it! Good luck!
We love Dave Ramsey!! We took the class at the beginning of this year at church. We do not use the envelope method, but I know some that do and it works!!! We use "cash" via debit card, LOL. Hubs has no debit card. Hubs gets his money from me. We cut up all our credit cards and only use what money we have. That is what has worked for us. I'm happy to tell you we've paid off 3 cards this year!
We put everything on our VISA and pay it off at the end of the month. We earn points that way! We have a "rule" that if we don't "need" it... then don't buy it if it is over $50. No more than 2 of those purchases per month! =) Everything over $50 goes into our "can we swing it this month" conversations if we need one! ha ha! It has worked our entire 12 years of marriage so far! For a while groceries were killing us... so I started added it up and I was horrified at how much we were spending... so I started meal planning 'better' and stopped buying those things that weren't on the list... for the most part... groceries went WAY down!! =) My point is... Good luck!! With our way of budgeting We live debt free (minus medical or dental! *ugh* and the house of course!) =)
can't wait to hear how that goes... i really need to try it.
I heart Dave Ramsey! Some of his ideas are a little much for me, but I love the cash envelope idea. I think he says it's easier to keep swiping cards, but when you see the money physically depleting it helps to slow down and consider what you are spending. Best of luck! I know you can do it!
Let us know how it goes. I actually find I spend less when I don't have cash, but that is probably just me. My boyfriend and I were talking about this last night. When I have cash, I tend to spend it on stupid little things like drinks, and snacks that I typically wouldn't want to charge with my debit card. But I know this system does work for others. I have an excel spreadsheet with all my expenses that I used to just set a budget for myself, and so far I have been able to stick with it. I also balance my checkbook weekly to make sure I am staying within my budget. It's just me though, so I am sure that is much easier to do with just one person. Good luck!
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