If you want to keep on a budget, use the envelope method.

The envelope method really forces you to plan your shopping trips so you know what you’re buying and what your spending.

It’s generally a good idea to plan ahead anyway, because it makes your shopping trip quicker, you won’t forget to buy something you needed, and you can avoid impulse buys. Speaking of impulse buy’s, I don’t recommend going shopping when you’re hungry. It might seem obvious, but you’ll probably end up buying a lot more food and things you don’t really need just because it all looks so good and your eyes are bigger than your stomach when you’re hungry.

So what’s the envelope method for grocery shopping?

It’s actually very simple; and simple is good when you’re trying to budget or you wouldn’t do it.

All you need to do is set aside separate envelopes for each week of the month.

1. Mark them with the week so you know when to use it and how much you put in it.
2. Add cash to each envelope that you want to use for spending on groceries. For example, put $100 in each envelope and you will have $400 to spend on groceries for the month.
3. Go to the store with just that envelope, you can’t spend more than $100 vs. if you have your debit card or credit card you can just swipe it and forget how much money you just spent.
4. This forces you to pay attention to prices because you only have a limited amount to spend.
5. It also helps you plan out your meals which can lead to healthier choices and overall savings because if you just buy groceries but don’t know what you’re gonna cook. You might do a good job of stocking your pantry but the food will just sit there because you decided to cook something different.
6. It also pushes you to look through the sales flyers so you can buy whats on sale and plan your meals around sale cooking.

Make the cash in your envelopes a reasonable amount.

Don’t start off saying ‘I’m gonna put $50 in my envelopes’ if you usually spend $150 a week, or if you aren’t even really sure how much you spend per week. If you do this and fail, you’ll just get discouraged that you failed and will just give up. Don’t set yourself up for failure by starting off like that. Instead, give yourself a little extra to start, and as the weeks or months go on, challenge yourself to get better.

Lower the amount in each envelope if you want to set a challenge for yourself. You can also give yourself motivation for any extra money that’s in the envelope each week. Maybe save the extra money for a movie night, or something small like that. If you’re setting enough money aside from your envelopes each week to be saving for a vacation, then your envelopes probably have too much money in them to begin with; your vacation savings and budget should be something separate and not tied to your grocery envelopes.

Have you ever tried the envelope method for grocery shopping? Have you tried it for other things like entertainment budget or pamper myself money? What did you think? Do you still do it?

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