My wife's weird 'envelope system' for our vacation fund actually worked

We were trying to save for a trip to Florida but kept dipping into the money for small stuff. My wife, who hates spreadsheets, got a box of 100 envelopes and wrote numbers from 1 to 100 on them. Every Friday, we'd pull a random number and had to put that many dollars in that envelope. It felt like a silly game, but seeing the stack of fat envelopes in the kitchen drawer made it real. We ended up saving over $3,000 in about six months without even feeling it. The best part was the day we pulled envelope 100 and had to stuff it with a hundred dollar bill - we ordered pizza to celebrate. Has anyone else used a physical, almost childish trick to get their savings on track?

2 comments

2 Comments

danielm153d ago

Gotta admit that sounds way more fun than my sad spreadsheet. I tried something similar but with a jar for loose change, ended up with like eighty bucks and a life lesson about how heavy coins are. Your wife is a genius for making you pull a random number, that's the kind of chaos I can get behind. Bet that hundred dollar envelope felt like winning the lottery.

ninam863d ago

Ha, the coin jar struggle is real. I did that once and the bank teller looked at me like I brought in a bag of rocks. What did you even do with the eighty bucks? I feel like found money like that either gets blown on something dumb or finally buys that one thing you keep putting off.