It’s now been almost two months since we made the switch to cash. I am LOVING this system! I now rarely have to check in online to do our budget via online banking – because we almost never use our credit and debit cards. Most everything is cash!
PROS:
- I can see the amount of money I have to work with for my budget. I can see that I have x amount for groceries, y amount for me, and z amount for home improvement projects.
- I feel the cash leave my hand as I spend it. Are we spending less? Not sure. But I do feel it.
- My husband is no longer dependent on me to tell him how much money he has left to spend for the month. He knows because it’s either in his pocket, or it’s not.
- I don’t have to track every single expense, the way I did when we were doing online banking, debit/credit cards, and spread sheet. Now I mainly just track utilities and gas.
- We don’t go over budget! I gave the example of Lilleigh’s party budget, but here’s an example from our monthly budget – We want to plant a garden in the backyard. We actually have started it. We spent the amount we had in “home maintenance” fund to buy soil and such. And now we are at a stopping point because the envelope is empty. Now technically we could shift around money in envelopes, but since it’s still winter (well, technically), we aren’t in a huge hurry yet, so we will wait till next month to finish this project.
CONS:
- It is annoying to go to the bank at the first of the month and make the withdrawal. I mean inconvenient even. But really that’s it. Can’t think of another con.
And I should also mention that in our grocery budget, we have $2 left for the month! But we aren’t going over! I should have all of the ingredients I need for our meals, and if I don’t, then I’ll declare it “pantry clean out week”!
How’s your budget going? Do you use the cash system?
I cant’ even tell you the last time I used cash.
We actually put everything on credit. Everything……we pay it off in full each month. They lose money on us because we actually earn cash by doing this. Not everyone can do this of course, but for us, we end up using the cashback as our vacation money. 
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Love that! We did that too up till this year. We just decided cash would help us spend less in the long run. But we still use the credit card for our other categories!
Like you, pay it off every month and just use it for rewards.
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We used to do the exact same thing…pay with credit cards for everything and pay off each month. We decided to start the cash systerm last month; still working out kinks, but I think after a few months, we’re really going to see some savings (or not spending as much).
We also notice that we spend less! Didn’t think that would be the case for us since I consider myself to be very disciplined already, but we definitely spend less!