We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post, at no additional cost to you.
A friend of mine asked the other day about why and how we do our cash system.
In short, we’re loosely following Dave Ramsey’s system for budgeting. We pay most of our bills online, and everything else is typically pre-allocated before payday arrives.
We pay cash for most budget categories, with groceries and clothing being the two biggest. Gas money stays in our account because it is so much easier for me to pay with a debit card at the pump than dragging three kids inside the gas station to pay with cash. It has really helped us to stay within our budget categories. We did okay before, but it’s been a lot easier to stay within the budget with cash.
We’ve been working on becoming debt free, and now that we can actually see the end, it’s even more motivation to keep going and get that debt gone forever. Some of it was ignorant, fresh-out-of-college debt, but a lot of it was what Dave calls survival debt too. Either way, we want that debt gone for good and we’re working as hard as we can toward that end. And finally, I can say we’re getting close!
You know, it’s amazing. Once we stopped using credit cards to help us through tough times, that’s when we started seeing God’s provision in amazing ways. That’s when we started seeing things like money in the mail, people helping us pay our mortgage, bags of groceries or grocery money given to us when we were out of food, and I could go on and on. It’s funny how once we stop using plastic to meet our needs, that’s when we see God truly meet those needs, and in amazing ways.
Anyway, back to the cash system. . .I made the cash envelope wallet because I wanted something to keep the cash in one place in my purse, without mixing up the categories. What I wasn’t expecting was other people liked them and wanted wallets too.
Here’s mine:
Here’s one I made for an online friend K: (and she was kind enough to email me with suggestions to make it better after she received it!)
And here’s a picture of two that are listed in my Etsy shop:
So our plan is to work as hard as we can, as fast as we can, to earn extra money to go toward becoming debt free. I told Stephen that seeing the end helps me be even more determined to get there as fast as I can!
Okay. I want to send a check but have not seen a p.o. box listed with who to send it to. So…if you can email me…I’d like to purchase this if possible. ;o) No worries if you’d rather not use the check option. I’m using envelopes as it is, but this makes it all simpler.
Is this in your etsy? What am I saying..I’ll go take a look. We too are ‘at the end’ of the debt tunnel. Unfortunately, my beloved isn’t on board too well. We’ve been out of debt before; he isn’t devoted to the cash only system and uses the credit card almost immediately after we clear it of debt :(. I’m a bit funked out as we end the debt yet again. Perhaps if I can purchase this from you (you’ll have my email since I gave it to comment), it may inspire him. We pay cash pretty much exclusively these days (except we snail mail paying our bills); that’s why we’re almost 100% debt free. Like I said: we’ve been ‘here’ before! Groan. Your site is very helpful, Melody. ;o)
Almost 100% there – that’s GREAT, Mrs. K! I’d love to be so close like that. I sent you an email. 🙂
We started our TMMO in Aug/Sept & have already paid off almost half our debt!
We’ve also put almost everything on cash (bills are paid online like you & gas is debit as well).
We use pencil cases to separate it all & then take the pencil case that we need when we go shopping for something specific. That way there’s less of a chance of buying stuff we don’t need! 😉
A pencil case – what a great idea! I never thought of that!
This is a great program. Used DR’s TMM to pay off my debt, so love this idea. Wish more and more people chose to live debt-lessly.
Hope God continues to bless the “fruit” of your hands!
Thank you, Steve.