Extraordinary in the Ordinary

Have you heard of the envelope system?  Many finance programs teach this all cash system for tracking and managing money.  It’s great.  Our children used it when we were teaching them about money.  It’s just a little hard to go to an ALL cash system as adults.  It works great for spending allowances but is not practical for much else.  My budget system basically turns your CHECKING account into an envelope system. It’s perfect!

I’m very visual and hands on.  If I don’t have a system that works with that, trust me, it’s not good.  It’s out of sight, out of mind, and I’m sure I do not have to tell you the havoc that wreaks on a household budget.

I’m a little embarrassed to admit this, but I had no concept of true money management when my husband and I got married.  Fortunately for me he is a patient man.  I would look in the checkbook and see a balance and think, “Oh, great!  We have money to spend.”  It wasn’t until I took an accounting class at a local college that the light bulb went off in my head.  I can’t even begin to tell you how happy this made my dear husband.  My ADD mind could not grasp this until I visually saw this on paper in an accounting system.  That is when I said I have GOT to create a modified version of this for our household.

So after a bookkeeping class, I was understanding the concept of  the fact that there is not magic money.  It has to come from somewhere in the budget. So modified your basic business accounting system into a simple home envelope (minus the envelope) accounting system.  It allows you to keep running totals in each budget category, but it is designed to go on one sheet so that you are not having to look all over the place every time you need a number.  We also incorporated our check register into the system. This was about 12 years ago, and we have used it ever since.

Now we know EXACTLY how much we have for spending, saving, to go towards a big project that we are saving for or any other category we choose to add.

Advantages:

• Paper – you never have to worry about your hard drive crashing and losing everything or having to boot up for a quick check.
• Ability to view all your categories at once.
• It allows you to know EXACTLY what you have to spend for different spending and savings categories.
• It is perfect for visual, hands-on people.
• Also perfect for the ADD mind. It organizes what our minds cannot.

Leave a comment with your e-mail if you would like to try it!