I live in the countryside so having a car is essential for me. I repeated this process to work out how much to allocate for fuel, which I noted in the ‘Transport’ section of the Budget Planner. I then divided this total by three to calculate a monthly average and rounded this figure up to account for prices increasing. To work out a target for groceries, I used the Spending Insights section of the Starling app to look back over what I’d spent in the last three months. I then entered how much I wanted to spend on groceries for myself and how much I could expect to spend on food and other necessities for my two dogs. (The figures and images below are illustrations, not actual figures or images from my bank account.) To kick off, I opened Starling’s Budget Planner and entered my monthly income and monthly bills, which include: This digital envelope system doesn’t involve physical cash and can include card payments, direct debits and standing orders. I can create multiple Spaces, for example for Subscriptions, Transport and Entertainment, and top them up with my target spending amount.
Traditionally, this method involves separating physical cash into different envelopes to budget for different expenses.Īs a Starling customer, I can use Saving Spaces, the app feature that enables me to keep money separate from my main balance, to organise digital envelopes. The budgeting method I use is a digital version of the envelope method, also known as cash stuffing. In other words, now that groceries, fuel and energy are more expensive, I looked at my spending and created a new budget with more accurate spending targets using Starling’s Budget Planner. With this fund I've also stocked up on things like toilet paper, waters and cleaning supplies that I keep in our pantry as well.Ĭheck out our website for very and effective plastic cash envelopes.This month, I went back to school with my finances. I'm always scanning the stores for a good sale while shopping and I only buy items I know our family will be needing and using. If I don't buy anything this month with it I roll it over to the next month.
I usually end up stocking up on pastas, canned goods, jams, peanut butter, and nuts when I find them on sale. The purpose of this envelope is to spend $10.00 a month on sale items specifically for our pantry. One envelope I've added recently is the "build your pantry fund". I add a weekly deposit of a budgeted amount into each envelope but when I plan shopping trips I purposely try to stay as far below that budget as I can so that I accumulate a small fund and there is always money in our envelopes. The fun envelope is kept at home because we plan fun ahead of time.Įveryone's budget will be different. I keep the Food/Groceries, Household, and Gas envelopes with me in my wallet so that I have them when needed. For us that was Food/Groceries, Household items, Gas, & Fun. It's good to identify the areas that you easily overspend on and lead with those categories for cash envelopes. It was a half debit and half cash system. When we first started I kept major bills on auto debit and budgeted cash for everything else. (There are a ton of super cool envelopes and binders available out there but early on I did not want to spend a lot of money on cool organization.) Click here for our affiliate link to 2 budget wallets and binders I ended up buying later on. Then I grabbed envelopes and started titling them.
When I first started, I made a monthly budget of ALL bills and costs which included food, fun spending, gas. TODAY!Įasily put, its an organized envelope system with allotted amounts of money placed in categories to help you stay on track with your spending. After a few hours on Pintrest I said okay, I have regular envelopes and I am going to get organized. I needed the easiest step by step system available. Dave Ramsey has his famous system but I was overwhelmed already and reading the in depth system made me feel even worse. So I got online and started looking up cash systems and the Cash Envelope System kept coming up.
ONLINE CASH ENVELOPE SYSTEM HOW TO
Spending cash was new to us and we had no idea how to organize ourselves. Since then we figured out that paying cash for bills and anything we could was the best way to keep our spending on track and hold us accountable. That is when we started unsubscribing, cutting costs, and using cash. When Kevin and I first lost our jobs within a month of each other in March of 2020 we start incurring overdraft fees monthly because we had all of our bills automatically debited from our account, but were obviously making less money. For us that would be 7 lbs of ground beef, 3/4 tank of gas or a family date night. Over draft fees of $35.00 may not seem like a lot of money but let's compare that to what we can buy with $35.00.
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