Cash Envelope Stuffing Tips

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We just finished our October budget and we have a lot of little miscellaneous cash envelope categories this month.

I thought it would be fun to show you guys what’s in our cash envelopes and how I am stuffing our cash envelopes for October.

Read: How to Get Started with the Cash Envelope System

How to Use Cash Envelopes for Budgeting

1. Make a Budget!

We just finished doing our budget for October in the EveryDollar app, which is what me and my husband use every month.

That’s Dave Ramsey’s app for budgeting, and it works really well for us.

Read: How to use Dave Ramsey’s Every Dollar App

2. Decide What Needs to be Paid Online vs. Cashed Out

I printed everything off, and I’m going to go through and just see what categories need to be actually cashed out and what doesn’t.

We’re not going to take out the cash for our rent. That gets paid electronically.

Same for electricity and other utilities.

But there are a lot of little random, miscellaneous categories and those are the ones we will use to stuff our cash envelopes.

We learned our lesson last month.

We didn’t cash out all the categories, and things started getting really confusing.

We ended up having to try to balance the budget to make it work at the end of the month.

So, this month, we’re going to cash out all of these little miscellaneous categories that we budgeted for, even though it’s a lot.

Read: How to Budget for Beginners

3. Download and Print Out My Free Cash Envelopes

I’m also going to show you how to use my free budgeting — or cash envelope printables.

You can fill yours with all your cash for all of your different categories too.

First, let me show you how I use my free cash envelope printables to make our cash envelopes every month.

A lot of times I just reuse them so that I don’t have to continually print them out.

I’ll just mark it out and add the new name for each month.

But you can print them as many times as you need, and I also have a blank one in there.

It’s really easy to do. You just cut around the lines and follow the directions.

You’ll fold it and tape it up. And it’s ready to use and get stuffed with cash!

Examples of categories we use with our Cash Envelopes include:

• Groceries
• Fun Money
• Vet Appointment
• Halloween Decorations
• Babysitter
• Birthday Parties
• Halloween Costumes
• Wedding Gifts

The more specific you are and more intentional you are with your planning, the less likely you will have trouble sticking to your budget!

Read: Budget Categories You’re Probably Forgetting

4. Go to the Bank Before the Month Begins and Stuff Your Cash Envelopes

I’ll give the category list and amounts to my husband and he goes to the bank to cash out everything we need to stuff our envelopes.

5. Planning and Budget Meetings are Important to Success

The vet, or doctor’s appointments that you know you’re going to have to pay cash for, call ahead so you know how much you will need.

Brainstorm activities, birthdays, and events so you don’t end up surprised by a budget “emergency”.

Read: How to Have a Budget Meeting with Your Spouse

Go ahead and try these cash envelope stuffing tips so you can stick to your budget and pay off debt faster this year!

You might also like:

• Our Monthly Debt Free Journey Updates (Start here)
• How to Cut Your Family’s Expenses
• How to Pay Off Large Debt with the Debt Snowball
• Dave Ramsey’s 7 Baby Steps

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