Keep a “month’s set” of envelopes in a drawer, stocked with the month’s cash, and take a “carry set” of envelopes with you, with just a week’s worth of cash taken from the month’s set.

Stock the month set with the full budget for the month.

then every Friday or whatever day you decide on, once a week take a weeks’ worth from the month set and put it in your carry set of envelopes.

then you don’t need to worry about tracking your “envelope deposits” as it just becomes a once a month thing.

2nd thing:

Include in your “month set” an envelope called “the bank.” that’s where you keep a good amount of extra cash (beyond the budgeted amounts) with a good selection of smaller bills, like $50 in ones, $100 in fives, and some tens and twenties.

This makes it easy to make change for the envelopes.

3) Include in your “carry set” an envelope marked “visa” or “mastercard”.

This is so you can use your credit card as a means of payment in the cash envelope system. the first thing you do in the cash envelope system is always to go look in the cash envelope before making a purchase. But now, if you have reason to, once you have looked and seen that the dollar bills are in there for the purchase, you can decide to use the visa as a means of payment for the amount of the purchase.

Now swipe your credit card and make the purchase.

Take the amount of the purchase in cash out of the “gas” envelope and put it in the “visa” envelope. Now you have adjusted your gas envelope down, and designated that money to pay the visa bill at the same time.

voila.

3 great envelope budget refinements.

I just wanted to let you know that I enjoyed your article and I plan on featuring it in my Friday Round Up post tomorrow on my site.

All the best,

Peter

@Ramona - I can totally relate to the differences between plastic and cash. We still struggle to add things up correctly to come in under budget, but it’s getting easier. Mrs. DB actually takes a calculator with her to help make sure things work out sometimes.

I linked back to it so others will find it.

All the best
Elliott Russell

Thanks for a great blog.