Laura's Mommy Blog

Archive for the ‘Finances’ Category

Believe it or not, we have actually kept up with this experiment of living on the cash jar budget. We are now going on week 4 of the jars and I have to say it has been going really well. We have been really good with our spending and have actually had money left over in our jars at the end of the weeks, which has been stockpiling.

I can’t say it enough, but this experiment has been a very positive experience. I am proud to say that I always know EXACTLY where my money is being spent. It’s so nice to know that you can predict how much money will be spent in a week. We withdraw the cash from our account at the beginning of the week, and then for the rest of the week we know that nothing else will be spent. So, this means that we already have a good idea of where the account will be at the end of the week. It is such a good feeling. Of course the jars are a bit restricting, but it has taught me to really think before I make a purchase. I ask myself “Do I really need that?” A lot of the time I think we buy things because we want things, but don’t necessarily need them. That is the type of behavior that gets a lot of people in trouble.

Since we are a single-income family, we have to be careful about where we spend our money. For families with two incomes, maybe they have more disposable income than we do, so they can afford to splurge on extras, but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t benefit from trying this experiment. I think that being aware of where your money is being spent is one of those basic skills that everyone should have, but they don’t teach us that in school. Why is that? This would be a great course to teach in both elementary and high school. Kids are exposed to commercialism so early in life now, so we should teach them how to make responsible decisions with money. If kids grow up their whole lives never having to think about money, then how can we expect them to act responsibly with a credit card once they are old enough to go out and get one. This experiment is a great way to show your kids that you can only spend what you have, so you need to give good thought into what you will spend it on.

I have to say that by living off the jars, my husband and I rarely argue about money anymore. I think that fighting about money is one of those things that every couple encounters. It is always on the top of the list whenever you hear anyone talk about the most common things couples fight about. Now that we have the jars, there isn’t anything to fight about. Now we can spend more time fighting about why my husband insists on shuffling papers all over the counter rather than gathering them in an organized pile, or why, when he puts the garbage out, does he always have to leave a little bit of garbage left in the garage. Why can’t he just put it all out? These are big mysteries to me, if anyone has any ideas on how I can correct, please let me know.

Back to the experiment…

Since we had money stockpiled from previous weeks, it really helped out last week when we were sick and had a lot of extra expenses due to medication. We had to spend a lot of money on cough medicines, ibuprofen, throat lozenges… the list goes on and on. Regardless, we were still able to buy all those things without having to withdraw extra money out of our account. I was even able to do a bit of Christmas shopping! So you see, the jars are restricting, but they do give you some wiggle room.

Have you tried any budgeting methods similar to this? I would love to hear your story and find out how it went.

The week of my experiment has come to an end, and I wanted to let you all know how it went. Even though Steve and I were a bit scared of what it would be like to live on such a restricted cash budget for the week, I am happy to say that it went really well. The exercise of filling out the worksheet is something that everyone should do, regardless of where you are financially. It is an eye opener as to where your money is going, and this is knowledge that everyone should have.

The cash jars were an amazing tool! It really helps you think about what you are spending your money on and helps to prevent you from making unnecessary impulse purchases. I would never bring any cash out with me unless I knew I was stopping somewhere to pick up something that we needed, so I was unable to pick up things on the go. I still had my debit and credit cards on me, but I didn’t use them once this week. I am happy to report that of the $237.50 that we started with in the jars at the beginning of the week, we are still left with $70.89 in the jars. That is amazing! It just goes to show that it really can be done. Steve’s birthday is coming up next week, so it is nice to know that we will have some extra cash left over for a gift and dinner.

We are going to continue using the jars and limiting our spending because we really like the fact that this method is helping us save our money. We really want to go on a family vacation next year, and I have no doubt in my mind that if we keep this up, we will have no problems in affording the vacation. We may have to bend the rules a little during Christmas because spending always goes up at that time of year, but I am going to be very conscious of what I am spending on gifts and try to keep it to a minimum. Besides, Christmas is a little more than just presents, right?

So, go ahead, join the challenge and try living on the cash jar budget for a week. I would love to hear from anyone else that has tried this or that will try it. Please share your story with me and let me know if it was a positive experience for you.

Thank you Gail Vaz-Oxlade for all of your great advice!

I spent some time this week reviewing our bank statements and plugging in the numbers to Gail’s Worksheet, and I finally came up with the amounts to put into our cash jars. So, below are the jars of cash that we have for our spending for the week. There is actually one jar missing for “Other”. I bought a fifth jar, but realized it was broken when I got home, so there is one jar of $29.50 missing from the photo.

It will take some discipline, but I know that we can definitely live within these means. It might not seem like $140 for groceries is a lot, but I recently switched grocery stores and have found that I am saving a lot of money on food. Last week I spent well-under the $140 on food, so I think we’ll be okay. I’ll let you know at the end of the week how this experiment played out.

If you’ve ever tried this, please share your story with me.

Budget Cash Jars

If you missed my previous post on this topic, please go to this page.

Living on a single income is hard. When my daughter was born and my maternity leave was up, my husband and I decided that I would not go back to work. We wanted to give my daughter as much of our time as we could by having one parent at home with her full-time. Now, this isn’t to say that parents who both work out of the home are presenting their children with a disadvantage. I fully support both working moms and stay-at-home moms. We just felt that staying at home was the best choice for us, and we were very fortunate to be able to have that choice, since I realize that many families do not.

Now, back to the money aspect. I love watching the show Till Debt Do Us Part. For those of you who have not seen it, it is a show that helps couples that are in deep debt get back on track by balancing their finances, and putting them on a strict spending budget. We are no where near the situation that these couples are in, in fact we do our absolute best not to accumulate any debt, but I am amazed at the spending budgets that these families are put on. The host puts them on a cash only spending budget and gives them jars with certain categories and dollar amounts. For example, they will only have $125/week for food, $25/week for transportation, and $12.50/week for clothing and gifts. These jars are only for their variable expenses, things that they can play around with and make adjustments to. They are not allowed to use any credit cards or use their debit cards.

I am really fascinated by this and often wonder if I could live like that. That would probably save us a lot of money and we would know exactly how much money we would be spending each week. At the beginning of the week, the money would be allocated, and you wouldn’t be drawing from your bank account at all during the week. Wouldn’t that be wonderful? You would know exactly where your money is going.

So, here comes the idea that is going to make my husband really grumpy this week. I am going to institute the cash-only-jar budget! I am going to use Gail Vaz-Oxlade’s budget worksheet to come up with the numbers and decided what amounts to come up with for our variable expenses. Here is a link to the instructions and worksheet if you would be interested in doing this yourself: http://www.gailvazoxlade.com/articles_f/article31-2.htm

I’ll keep you posted on what I come up with and how we’re doing. Do you think you could do it? I challenge everyone to do it along with me and see if we can all learn to take better control of our financial lives.