The Spending Diet

It’s exactly what it sounds like…a restriction we have put on ourselves from unnecessary spending.

Have you ever wondered how much money you would have today if you had cut down on unnecessary spending?

Both my husband and I married into a financial mess because we both sucked at budgeting. I was the type that chose a new outfit over paying rent (hey, I was broke but at least I was cute 😌😅) and he couldn’t keep a savings for the life of him. 🤷🏽‍♀️

Thankfully since then we have both grown being more responsible and intuitive to what is going on financially. This doesn’t mean we can’t use some help from time to time.

I’m all about gaining knowledge to do better.

I reached out to a good friend of mine who loves all this budgeting-financial-math stuff (😆) and threw some of our dilemmas her way. She immediately responded and set up an appointment to come chat with us.

I explained to her that during the height of the pandemic I got discouraged and dropped the ball with budgeting our meals. I grew terribly frustrated making grocery lists just to arrive at the store to hardly find what was on my list. I would constantly have to amend it and improvise according to what was on the shelves.

This led to a lot of overspending from week to week. I literally stopped making a list and resorted to grabbing what I saw available to make meals out of it.

FYI: ❌🙅🏽‍♀️ Not a good plan! ❌🙅🏽‍♀️

During our appointment she got out her budgeting books and shared how she managed her family’s money from week to and month to month. She explained how this allowed her to build up a savings to always have on hand.

We did give those savings envelopes a try back then, a concept taught by Dave Ramsey, but that didn’t last long for us. Maybe we weren’t determined enough or just felt it was too much of a hassle to keep up with.

Then it seemed as soon as we built up any kind of savings an emergency happened where we had to spend it. 😩

The system she explained was keeping cash in these see through zippered waterproof envelopes (similar to what we tried before but so much cuter and more fashionable lol) so you can see, feel and manage your money between different categories. I know I’ve said many of times I wish we could hold on to our money longer before having to give it away to pay bills.

Our goal is to not live above our means and stay within our monthly limits. This will allow us to have and keep monies to distribute to other needed categories and build on those.

We’d still utilize our credit union but a lot of the sorting will be done at home by ourselves. Then if any amounts need to be deposited into our accounts to pay bills or shop online we can easily do so.

We recently opened up another account at a different credit union just to work with this new savings system. A portion of my husband’s paycheck is automatically deposited into this account every pay period. This account will be used only for our cash flow system.

Meeting with my friend really motivated and encouraged us to do better so we can see the benefits of this spending diet. Seeing how full her budgeting books were of 💵🤑 was also very inspiring 😄!

She also helped us see where we were overspending and spending our money on things that could be avoided ie. eating out for lunch too often, buying hair products that I am well capable of making myself etc.

We’ve been using our new little black book to fill up our envelopes (as you can see from the cover photo) and it’s been a lot of fun watching them grow. I have also been sticking with our grocery budget and cooking meals within those limits.

I’m not sure if I will use those budgeting sheets that came with the binder because I tend to do most planning on my laptop now. It is nice to have them just in case though. Also, my tech geek (husband 😁) has already set me up with an application that I can plug our numbers into to keep track of our weekly spending.

There are a few more categories I look forward to adding to but I know in due time every envelope will hold something. We’re focused on filling the ones we know we’ll need or use more often.

My friend was also telling us there have been many of times she robbed from one envelope to pay another 😂. She was explaining how there was a house need that was far more important than saving for birthdays. Eventually when she got more money flowing in she was able to put money back into that envelope.

_{Hmmmmm, so maybe I can rob from savings to pay shopping 🤔💡😎🤫🤭.}

I heard from some of you last time about the irrelevance of cash and coins in your countries. I couldn’t believe hearing that in some places pennies have been done away with. I think we knew this would happen eventually and will continue to slowly happen.

However, while cash is still active and in flux here we will take advantage of this savings system. We hope it helps us to hold on to money better and be able to take care of things without reaching deep into our bank accounts. This will help cut down on the transfer of monies which seem to eat up our finances pretty fast.

This system has encouraged our kids to want to save even more. Along with getting their own coin counter jar they now want their own savings binder. My eldest daughter will be turning thirteen in a couple of months so this will be a great gift for her.

_{I can’t wait to get her one because she likes “holding” our binder and flipping through the money pages 😏🤪. HANDS OFF!!}

All photos are my own and were taken with our Cannon EOS Rebel T6.

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I’m always curious to know about your systems and if you’ve had any experience with the cash envelope budgeting. Please share if you have!

Thanks again for your attention and reading through this post about our new plan. It’s been great having money leftover instead of living paycheck to paycheck and feeling stuck and limited. I dread that feeling so much.

Enjoy your week ~ ❤️

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