The Envelope Budget {How and Why It Works}

2024 is HERE and it’s time to start taking control of your finances!

If you’ve struggled to maintain a budget in the past, the Envelope Budget system is the perfect way to grab ahold of your finances and stick to a budget!

These budget envelopes are one of the best and easiest strategies we’ve found. 

Why Budget?

Family life comes with a lot of responsibility and constraints. It seems that everything is in constant competition for your time.

Learning to live on 24 hours a day is a never-ending and ever-changing process.

The same can be said for your budget. If you aren’t careful, you will end up with more month at the end of your money!

Families of all sizes are subject to tight budgets and keeping to them can mean the difference between living comfortably and living under severe stress when the money and savings run out.

Now that we’ve become a family of nine, sticking to a budget is more important than ever. Saving my family money has always been important to both of us, and sticking to a budget is one of the best ways to take control of one’s finances. 

When we were young and first starting out, we barely had two pennies to rub together.

The budget was our number one priority if we were going to make ends meet. One method that really helped us through the early years was the Envelope Budget System. 

The Budget Envelopes System

Using Budget Envelopes is exactly as simple as it sounds. We made a list of our bills, designated an envelope for each one, and filled it with the budgeted amount of cash.

We never spent beyond the allocated budget envelope and the money in each envelope was only for the specified bill. When the money ran out, we had to make do another way.

For example, the food budget was set at a certain amount that included groceries and eating out. We had to be very careful to stick to the allotted amount or it was grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup until we refilled the budget next month!

If we wanted to splurge on a meal out that month then we had to find ways to save on our monthly grocery bill in order to make that happen. 

By sticking with the envelope budgeting system, we always had cash in our checking account at the end of the month. Sometimes we’d even have a tiny bit left in an envelope or two that we could put into savings. 

These days most bills are paid online so the budget envelope method might seem a little outdated. If you’re the kind of person who likes to pay most bills online, don’t worry.

The budget envelope system can still work for you! There are apps and websites for that! Several actually. Digital envelope budgeting is a great modern option to follow the spirit of this method.

Most of these apps and websites function the same way. You design your budget within the program and allocate the proper amounts to each bill. By entering your transactions into the program, it tracks the amount spent for each “envelope”.

EveryDollar, GoodBudget, Mvelopes, and Budget Ease are just a few examples of the apps and websites you can use as your envelope budget system tool!

Sticking to your envelope budget will ensure that you have money at the end of the month rather than more month at the end of the money! If you are having a tough time sticking to a budget, give the envelope budget method a shot.

It can’t hurt and could possibly save you a lot of unneeded stress. If you try it, let us know how it goes!

Here’s to sticking to a budget in 2024!