Okay, so I have said a few times that I use wallets in order to help budget for my spending between paydays.
I do this by putting and keeping cash in various physical wallets, that are labelled and allocated for different types of spending.
The theory is simple: when there is no more cash in the wallet that budget is spent until payday.
Also every dollar I spend out of each wallet between paydays has to be put back in that wallet come next payday.
So this way, when I spend cash out of a wallet, I am actually spending money out of next payday’s budget.
So, this gives me a reward for not spending cash, (as I will have to put less cash back in the wallet next payday).
Yet this also gives me a double pain of the spend, as there is the pain when you hand over cash for something (the spend feels more real).
Yet also I know that I have to take cash out of the next payday’s budget to put the cash back in the wallet that I have just spent.
For me the magic number that I base these wallets around is $20.00. Why is that?
Well, it’s simple, it’s easier to divvy up a fistful of twenties between wallets, than have to calculate out how many twenties, how many tens, and how many fives you will need.
So, each time I “Crack a Twenty” I have to update the next payday’s budget to reflect that I am going to put that twenty back in to that particular wallet.
This system also generates a fair bit of coins, which accumulates across a few different wallets. This got me thinking, why not consolidate those coins?
Here are my wallets as they stand now.
Okay so you see the labelled ones, they are self explanatory. You can also guess which wallet I use the most due to the wear on its label (Hint, it’s the Grocery Wallet).
The black square wallet on an angle is my regular wallet which contains all of my essential cards that I need on a regular basis.
So, what I have done is order new wallets (I simply could not find wallets locally that were not stupidly expensive.)
The new coin wallets arrived just now and they are the two new black ones with the coloured tags in the front. They are identical so the tags are so I can tell them apart.
The blue tag is for my Laundry Wallet (for the coins to use in the machines at the Laundromat).
And the yellow tag is for all of my coins to go into (you know, other than the ones for the laundry machines).
This new system collects all of my coins and forms a new “slush fund” of coins. This way I can try to spend with exact change or just steal a twonie to buy a loaf of bread.
This way I can reduce the amount of bills that I crack and hopefully save a bit more.
Also, I can perhaps be a bit freer with the smaller spends, say a cup of coffee or a candy bar.
We shall see how this works out.
As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive, and keep moving forward!
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