Budget Envelopes

Payday was Friday and I spent some time yesterday and today putting money into my envelopes. 

We are doing the envelope budget system. I've read about this for years in various frugal living sites (here's a description of it:  The Envelope System). 

It's pretty easy:  you figure out budget categories (which we have been doing for ages), and put cash in the envelopes for those categories.

We aren't doing this for everything in our budget.  The house payment, utilities, car insurance, and the like are paid online like we've been doing. 

We have categories that are going into electronic envelopes also.  We are saving a very small amount each month, that gets transferred from my checking to my savings.  I am going to add the following to the savings account:  auto insurance (so we can pay in full every six months instead of monthly, and avoid a monthly fee), savings for car and motorcycle registration and motorcycle insurance, and savings for the sewer/trash payment that we make every other month. No more scrambling for these payments.  For the auto insurance, I'm putting into savings the amount I would be putting into the insurance payment.  For the car/motorcycle registration and motorcycle insurance, I just added the items and got a total, divided it by 12, and that's the amount that is going into savings.  The sewer/trash is easy enough, but putting aside $55 a month seems so much easier than paying $110 or so....for some reason. 

The items that are going to be paid with cash are:  groceries, gas, entertainment, health care, and clothes. 

I must admit that it has not been easy to pay with cash for groceries so far.  I shopped at two different stores today.  One of them was Costco.  Of course I spent the usual amount there, but having to count it out in 20's was a whole different experience than swiping the debit card. 

We bought gas at Costco also, and had to use the debit card.  I'll just repay my debit card with cash from the envelope. 

It is simply a way of being mindful, I think.  I had to keep careful track of what I was spending at the store so I could be assured that I had enough cash.

And it's kind of scary looking at my bank account that has been pretty depleted from the cash withdrawal. 

On the other hand, I feel all kinds of powerful.  And that, bottom line, is why I'll keeping doing this.

Onward!