Dealing with cash only..

debtfree2010

Do you take the money out of the bank for the week ??

I get paid monthly and use my debit card for everything, but I think I could reduce my budget by dealing in cash only, as it would make me think about what's going in my trolley etc when shopping..

I just don't know weather to take £100 a week out or £400 a month and split it into envelopes??

What do you do??:)

Learning2Budget

400 a month but split it by 5. So most months when there are only 4 months. I then save 80quid into savings pot. L2B.x

Coco114

L2B , you just triggered a LBM for me

I have only been budgeting for 4 weeks .... Doh !! For someone quite smart , sometimes I am quite stupid !!! And that's probably why I come up short every month by about 4 days .... Thanks for that :T

materialgirl

I always wondered if I could really commit myself to do this.
It would be better for saving i guess as if you have a budget and then come under the budget, you can put it in a money box for holiday spending or something.

Hele_an

I have a budget of £10 a day which does not include food ( I have a separate account which I put that money into, £75 a month). I take out £10 cash a day and any money not spent gets put into a change purse. Any NSD I have the £10 gets transferred to my savings pot. My change purse means that at the end of the month I should (!) have extra money to put back into the savings pot as well.

I've been doing this for a month and half and as you can see from my signature - it's working pretty well for me!

tealady

Hi
What I do is have a monthly budget and also am one of those people who divide it by 5.
Then I ensure that I only take the cash out on the SAME day each week (doesn't matter if it is later in the week but try NEVER to take it out earlier).
8 months out of 12 I have a 4 week month and the spare cash is used either for treats or to put into saving.
HTH

poppasmurf_bewdley

I have a friend who works only in cash, and she has a remarkably good way of spending AND saving.

She earmarks her money for each week, but she makes that money last for eight days instead of seven. The result is that every seven weeks she has a spare week's money which she then puts into a savings account.

Magi74

I use a cashcard account for my day to day living. It's a great way to handle the budget - for example, it's a right pain to go draw cash if/when you see something you're tempted by.....giving you time to consider the purchase.

That's why I don't go with the idea of drawing your weekly/monthly money in one go. If it's in your purse or wallet then you might get caught by an inpulse buy. If you've only got £20 in your wallet and the shiny item costs £30....you're off to the cashpoint machine - and your MSE brain has time to save the day!

We do ours on a fortnightly basis. Transfer in what the budget says we have (we try to leave £10-40 off every time) and crack on. Best thing we ever did.

marmiterulesok

I calculate whether it's going to be a 4 or 5 week month and draw out the appropriate sum of money and put it aside.I only have one week's amount of money in my purse at a time.Any money left from that week,I put in a pot.I do this for each week and sometimes there's quite a lot left,in fact enough to pay for a week in the next month's budget IYSWIM.This is for all grocery shopping btw.

I do have seperate budgets for toiletries,cat food,household,clothes and shoes and storecupboard,which are all togethere in a seperate account.If I buy something in this category,I pay with my debit card and transfert the money into my current account to cover it.Hope that makes sense.So I do have my debit card in my purse all the time,but don't use it except for the above.

I do like the idea of trying to make the week last 8 days.

flutterbyuk25

After all my DD's are accounted for, I earmark £50 each for food and petrol per month, then allow myself £40 per week for my spends. I withdraw this money from cashpoint and once it's gone, it's gone! It works cos I'm now much less likely to break a tenner to buy something for £1.99 say, than I would have been to whack it on the debit card.

I need to work on the 5 week month thing though as get caught out by this!

HTH

oopsadaisydoddle

I've just started this last week withdrawing cash and using that only. It really was an eye opener. It also lasted really well although to be fair, that didn't include anything unusual e.g. haircuts - don't know whether to count those in my household budget or my 'spends'.