My budgeting system, how we use cash envelopes

If you have followed me on social media for some time now you know that I had been following the cash envelopes system up until I lost my job in March, at the start of the coronavirus epidemic.

Luckily, my boyfriend was living with me at the time and was able to cover my portion of the bills until I was able to receive unemployment benefits.

We've had two major changes since the last time I filmed, we now have three kids with us almost every weekend, and we have moved out of my apartment and have moved into our own place. So, our rent is a little more than before it's now $1200 per month and than we now have 3 car notes we take care of, my credit card payments, we have subscriptions together, and then a few separately. And then we both have past debts that we are working on paying off.

Oh and also my boyfriend got a job offer paying $10/per hour than his prior job, and of course, I have my side hustles, and also my new job where I am making a whopping $18/an hour. Yay! Lolz.

As many of you know I am currently working on receiving my MBA so I focus on school, my business/side hustles, and my job which is a regular Monday-Friday 8 am-5 pm shift with nights and weekends always off at a bank. They offer me amazing benefits and I have a ton of ways to increase my pay either through overtime or signing up for projects.

Income:

Just to start out I will advise you that right now I do not include any of my business profits into my budget because they are not significant enough yet for me to consider them part of my income.

I do have a few things in my budget that I pay for personally that are included but that is because I do not have a bank account yet that I trust 100% to use for my business. So I have those things coming from my personal account because I don't trust Paypal 100% right now because I was straight-up ripped off and they really don't side with the business when it comes to Paypal. But that's another story for another time.

So Devon makes approximately $828.00 per week, and can make more if he has income. & my paychecks are biweekly & include our health insurance, and also our HSA card which has now replaced my doctors & medications cash envelope. My paychecks are usually between $1080-$1280 biweekly, so we just plan for $1080 just in case.

Overall our income together, not including any of my business incomes is $5745.24.

Things we like to do:

During the summer we really love to take the kids to the swimming pool and we enjoy frequently grilling so a lot of our extra spending is really on pool fun and bbq foods.

Our kids our 4,5, and 9 so we have to frequently buy new clothes and shoes, but we try not to go overboard, Two of our kids stay with their mom 1/2 the week and with us the other half of the week, and then my son Jaxon lives with his grandma during the weekend, and lives with us on the weekends. The school he goes to is across the street from her house and so it's important for him to go to summer school and as well as back to school every day when school goes back to normal. Right now our school is considering A and B days, which is where half the classes are online and the other portion of classes is on campus as normal. Jaxon will start Kindergarten this year so we are super excited about that. The reason both of our kids live in separate homes is because we downsized apartments this year so we could start saving more each month, this always us to save up money and start repairing our credit so that we can buy a home within the next few years. So it's working out well for us, also both of us work from home so it's really a blessing in disguise.

A lot of what we do in the summer is free, especially since we have a very nice pool in our apartments now! It also has a few grills, some game areas, picnic areas, as well as canapes to lay under!

We love going to zoos and really anything that has to do with animals. The kids love animals and so do we, we are considered getting 2 marmoset monkeys this summer, but we both will need to work some overtime to be able to do that.

Bills We Have:

So now that you have a basic understanding of my life and all the crazy things we have to pay for I am going to give you a break down of our monthly necessary bills:

• Rent $1200.00

• Electric $130.00

• Water, Sewer, Trash $14.00

• Internet $100.00

• Phone Bill $125.00

• Car Note 1: $630.00

• Car Note 2: $504.00

• Car Note 3: $250.00

• Car Insurance: $245.00

• Credit Cards: $350.00

These are the bills that keep our day to day lives going. We have three car notes right now because I have two cars, this is because I have a car that I am stuck in with the payments that I do not drive, it is perfectly drivable however the warranty went out so I am terrified to drive it because I have extra money for repairs. But the $250 car payment is because my grandfather bought me a car with extremely great credit, so I got a very low rate, that is my daily car. I drive both cars, but the car that is my baby is $504 a month, I'm just scared of repair bills, but I love that car to death, it'll it will be paid off or refinanced as soon as I get the chance to get it paid down a bit.

The credit cards are for our plan to pay more than the minimum payments within $15-$20 more than the minimum payment if I have extra money I pay the most that I can.

Those are our necessary bills that we need to live, and our internet is so high because we both work from home and needed the best internet package we could afford so this is what we could get at the best rate for what we need.

So that is $3,548 altogether.

Our total income is $5745.24, so after all major bills, we are left with $2197 give or take a $100 or so because my paychecks can be higher or a little lower and so can his.

So now that we have all of our bills taken care of for our household, we look at our cash envelopes:

-Gas: $75 a week/ $300 a month

- Food: $200/ weekly $800 a month

- Clothes: $75/ weekly $350 a month

- Etc: $100/ weekly $400 a month

The leftover amount is $350.00 in savings!

However, we have unlimited overtime at my job so I can make more money at any time and also July is a month with 3 paychecks so it makes it easier to do everything. And also some weeks we don't spend nearly as much money as we planned to. This plan gives us a good place to start at so when we start getting tighter on our budget we have a lot of places that we can make improvements on. It makes everything a hell of a lot easier.

Side note: We also save everything additional that is leftover, including all change and coins. That goes into our savings account at the end of the month as well, or well the change goes every time the jar gets filled all the way.

If I work overtime it is usually because I am working on paying off a debt. I have a credit card that is pretty far over the limit that I need to pay back immediately so there's quite a bit of income that needs to go towards paying that off this month so they don't report that to the credit bureau.

There are so many changes that will be happening with our budget soon because we are still new here in our apartment and we are trying to make it livable for us because we are starting with almost nothing. Like we don't have TVs or anything like that. So we may dip into savings every now and then or us a credit card to purchase things for our apartment.

Well, I hope that this was a helpful insight to my budget and my day to day spending.

Until next time,

Taylor!