WFMW

I’ve written a few times over the years about Dave Ramsey’s envelope system he suggests for budgeting.  There is nothing more painful than handing over a wad of 20’s for your groceries.  A frappuccino doesn’t seem so important when you have to hand over a $5 bill instead of swiping a a bar code on an app.  It’s pretty amazing how you suddenly want to stay home so you don’t have to use that gas you emptied your envelope for. Cold hard cash will help you stick to a budget, no doubt. 

I find there is nothing more burdensome than spending money you don’t have and nothing more freeing than sticking to your budget.

However, we are terrible with cash.  We found it difficult to manage between two people.  We often forgot our envelopes when we went somewhere and didn’t know how much to spend.  Dealing with change at the end of the week was a pain.  When we misplaced $100 cash, that was our breaking point.

We started managing the entire budget through a spreadsheet and monitoring spending in mint.com (post).  I love mint.com, but really, it’s so easy to go right over your budget.

So, for months and months we’d figure out our budget and then watch those red lines in mint.com start showing up and then do absolutely nothing about it.  I always said mint.com was really good at helping me see our budget go in the red.  Red lines everywhere!

However, I think we’ve found a secret that keeps us on budget using the envelope system without cash.

I’ve mentioned since the beginning of the year that we’ve gotten back on track financially.  We’ve managed to stick to our budget using the envelope system and not get a single dollar out of the ATM.  Want to hear our secret?

Play money.

Seriously.

I’ve been shocked with how well this works.  We’ve stayed on budget, it requires zero cash and we haven’t used our credit cards. 

So here’s how it works.

1 – I create a zero-based budget using a spreadsheet.  I do it a month at a time and then refine every two weeks since that’s how often we both get paid.  I know where every dollar is supposed to go before we even get paid (thank you, Dave Ramsey).  

2 – Then, instead of getting cash, we printed this free educational printable money and cut it out so it looked like real cash.  The kids thought this was the best thing ever.  We use envelopes for our variable expenses like groceries, clothing, restaurants and blow money. 

3 – We use our debit card for those purchases and every day I check our account for purchases and take the money out of the envelope as we spend it. 

4 – For bills that are automated, I just check off on my spreadsheet that they’ve been paid as expected.

How does this help?

Even though it’s play money and seems like a lot of double work, there is something about seeing and feeling even the fake money that registers in my brain how much I can spend.  It’s a built-in accountability system that the online tool just doesn’t provide.  Scott doesn’t check anything online at all so having the box of envelopes in person in front of both of us keeps it at the forefront of both our minds.

And—if a bill gets lost, it doesn’t matter!

Also, we’ve been able to get our kids involved in budgeting.  We don’t share the entire budget with them, but we get them to help fill each envelope every two weeks.  They even know to ask if we have money in our budget to do something. 

For example, we started a special entertainment bucket so we could have family events each month and it’s actually made it more special limiting it to one event per month.  It’s taken the guilt from us for spending the money, we all have a good time trying to stay on budget and for some reason it’s much easier for the kids to process that there’s no money left in the envelope than us saying, “No, you can’t have that.”

We’ve only been doing this for about 2 months, but I’ve been so excited how well it’s working.

Perhaps if the envelope system hasn’t worked for you in the past, some fun play money just might be the trick!

Update:

I’ve uploaded our personalized budget template (based off Dave Ramsey’s) for anyone that would like to see it .

I print the second tab every two weeks and keep it on my desk. I use that in conjunction with Mint and the envelopes to stay on track.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B6KcRo_9sTric0VyNGpxMWRtUG8/edit?usp=sharing

The ones that are marked in yellow are the ones we have envelopes for and the ones in blue are the ones that get transferred out to a savings account for later use.

This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but dog toys are expensive.  And the really aggravating thing is within minutes, the entire thing is usually destroyed.  I may as well just throw $5 bills in the backyard and tell them to have at it.

After making my own T-shirt scarf and then reading Reuse, Refresh, Repurpose I was inspired to use several of the kids’ T-shirts they had outgrown to help solve this problem.

I started with a small T-shirt of Lexi’s.

I began by cutting 1” strips from the base of the T-shirt up to the arm hole level.

Here I am doing just that. 

Just seconds after taking this picture, my cousin who was in the pool playing in our canoe cut is foot trying to get in the canoe and we had to do some major first aid. 

It was so bad even a few band-aids wouldn’t cover it.  I had to use paper towels to cover the bleeding and then use medical tape from the girls’ play doctor kit to tape it down. 

I’ve now marked gathering a first aid kit high on priority list.

When you’re done with the first aid emergency, return to the cutting until you’ve cut strips all the way around the T-shirt.

Then, gather 3 strands at a time and braid the strips. 

When you get to the bottom of the braid, tie two strips together and then tie to other strips together to keep the braid in.

The finished product looks like this.

And then, you just hand it to the dogs and they figure out what’s next.

Tucker wins!

The whole project, first aid interruption withholding, should only take you about 5 minutes.

Works for me!

This post is linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

Comments are closed and winner is #2 comment, Dani!

Are you ready for the latest useful, organized, interactive eBook to hit the blogosphere?  Kristen Welch who weekly hosts Works for me Wednesday teamed up with blogger Jennifer De Groot to publish That Works For Me!  The new eBook compiles over 800 categorized tips helping you do life better.

And it appears my iPhone escapades have finally paid off.  I’ve put more than one cell phone down a toilet, cracked more screens than I can count and my latest, lost functionality of my lock button.  That Works for Me! includes my post What to Do When Your iPhone Lock or Home Button Quits Working.

I’ve been able to browse the eBook and this has everything: blogging tips, laundry tips, cooking tips, marriage tips and it goes on and on into 24 different categories.

Not only will you have 800 tips at a very low rate of 1 cent per tip, part of your money will be donated to Mercy House.  Mercy House gets pregnant women off the streets in Kenya, Africa and helps them in “nutrition, housing, prenatal care, Bible study, counseling, and job skills for sustainable living.”  I love it!

Now the very best part is I have a giveaway!  Just leave a comment here telling me in what area you could use a tip?  I’ll close it out Wednesday morning. Also, if you submit a tip during the month of April, you just might win a free house cleaning!  Think up your best tip and be sure to submit it!

In the meantime, feel free to check out my past Works for me Wednesday posts or go ahead and buy the book!  TODAY ONLY the eBook is only $5!!

That works for me!

OK,  this is one of those Works for Me Wednesdays where you find something new and you want to share it but you’re pretty sure everyone already does this and you’re about 33 years too late on the whole deal.  But I’m just going with it.

Growing up and even until recently, we always ate an apple either the old-fashioned way or used Pampered Chef’s apple slicer to produce 8 (?) even slices.  Well, recently we went somewhere and all I had was a knife and Lexi had no front teeth so I ended up slicing off thin pieces of apples for her.  She LOVED it.  In fact, we all do. We call them apple chips. 

Something about them being thin and easy to eat a whole slice at one time.  Or the texture seems better.  Maybe they remind us of potato chips. I can’t exactly figure it out but getting the kids to eat an apple is now a cinch!  Just plop a bowl in front of them and they disappear as fast as a bag of potato chips.  Give it a try.  It works for me!

This post is linked with We Are That Family

I’m a diehard iPhone lover but there is one feature that I think has fallen flat.  Siri.  Just this morning I saw my cousin complaining on Facebook with another example of how Siri did not interpret her request even close to correctly.  My problem is not so much that it doesn’t understand me but in the limited functions it can do.  For example, I can’t tell it to do anything on Twitter or Facebook, or any other app for that matter.  I could understand except Twitter is a built-in app now.  It should at least be able to open and refresh my timeline.

I’ve found it’s pretty limited to calling and texting people, weather, music, directions and searching.  Some of it is helpful but when it can’t understand what you’re saying, particularly when you’re requesting street addresses or names, it’s dreadfully useless.

However.

The one thing I constantly use Siri for is reminders.  I didn’t even know I had a Reminders app until a few months ago.  I was previously using my calendar to schedule things.  These days, if it’s not on my calendar, it’s NOT happening.  Funny enough, last week I saw Lexi had an upcoming dentist appointment.  I started warning her to get prepared 3 days in advance.  Finally, she said, “But they said they wouldn’t see me until May last time!”  Well, just in case, I made the phone call and sure enough the appointment in my calendar was still in there after we had already taken a canceled appointment a few weeks back and I had forgotten to remove the original appointment.  

The calendar is great and all but I schedule silly things like going to the pharmacy or calling a friend or leaving Amazon feedback I promised.  It’s not really an appointment but I need to do it at some point.  Reminders are great for this.  You still can schedule them, on repeat if needed, and it still reminds you at a certain time but it’s not clouding your calendar with the rest of the REAL appointments.

However, I find the reminder interface a little confusing.  It’s one of the few iPhone apps I say that about. 

Enter Siri.

I find it MUCH easier to say, “Remind me take out the trash every Tuesday at 7am.”  Bam!  It’s done, repeating reminder and all.

Here’s a transcript for my lunch today:

So it’s not grammatically correct but at least the words are correct.  It will show a pop-up notification on my screen at 12.  When I’m done, I can check it off in my Reminders app.  And if you know me, you know how much I love to do that!

Works for me!

This post is linked up to WeAreThatFamily.com

Why is it so many times I think of a great tip, it’s something Scott came up with? Hmm.  In any case, he doesn’t have a blog (and barely reads mine, for the record) so I get to post all his great ideas.

Like many of you, I’m sure, I keep a hand towel by the sink. In the case where I have to hand wash dishes, I always spread the hand towel out on the counter, wash, rinse and then like a game of Jenga, place all the dishes on the little hand towel. For years. And I mean YEARS, if I was losing at my game of Jenga and really needed more drying space, I’d just get another hand towel out and lay it beside the other and keep going. This was fine and all but Scott made it a little better.

See, about a year or two ago when I finally figured out how to cook something besides spaghetti (thank you, Ree), we figured out that the best way our house worked (ie, not have dirty dishes lying around for a week) is if I started and emptied the dishwasher, he reloaded it and he washed any of the larger dishes/pots left. I take out the trash normally so don’t feel too bad for him. This is the part where I don’t mind feminism so much. In any case, because he normally was left with several pots to clean, rarely was the one hand towel enough.

So.

He started keeping a large beach towel in the adjacent laundry room. When it was time to do dishes, he folded it in half and used that as the drying towel. It’s GREAT.

• It’s super absorbent, unlike many of my hand towels
• It expands to take up the entire countertop if we need it
• We can use it forever because it’s never getting dirty, just wet.  I do wash it occasionally just to calm my germ fears.
• I only have one hand towel out at a time.

Ya’ll. It works for me! Or him.  Whatever.

This post is linked up to WeAreThatFamily.com

OK, to really get this tip, you have to know I’m located in the South.  As I type this in late January, it’s 61 degrees outside.  All the rumors about us being unable to handle cold weather is pretty much truth.  Unlike my northern extended family, we don’t own a snow shovel.  We don’t own a snow blower.  I don’t even have an ice scraper in my van.  And most of all, we don’t have a place in our house set aside for all the jackets, shoes and other paraphernalia you need during the cold months.

Most of my northern family have basements.  In those basements, many of them have cabinets that hold all the shoes.  Shoes don’t go to the main level of the house.  There are also lots of hooks and cabinets for coats. 

And we?  Don’t. 

We don’t have room in our garage for this type of thing.  Our hall closet is small and packed.  So what happens during the winter months when we do need coats when we walk in the house (with our shoes) is lay them on the closest surface.  Some of my friends here have a coat closet and actually use it.  My mom has a coat rack near her garage they use.  But us?  Mine is usually hanging on a chair somewhere and the girls are usually on the floor in the playroom.

Well.

Here’s what we did to fix it.

We decided to use the outside of the hall closet.  When we were visiting an organizational store recently, I had the idea to get an over-the-door set of hooks, that I normally would have thought to use behind a door for towels or robes in a bathroom or closet, and put it on the outside of our hall closet door.  Now, it’s not that pretty but now we don’t have to try to squeeze our coats in and out of the closet, the kids can use it and it’s near the front door.  Best of all, we can take it down easily during our warmest months and stuff all the coats back in the closet for storage.

Here it is with the front door closed.

However, our front door is usually open and they’re mostly hidden.

Depending on your weather and house floor plan this may or may not work for you, but it works for me!

This post is linked to WeAreThatFamily.com