As you have probably read before, we are in process of planning our December Disneyland trip. So far, between hotel and tickets, we have saved $950.04 (for a family of 5, with 4 day park hoppers and a suite)! We have so far saved more than we've spent!
We still have food, gas, and spending money to plan.
How many of you cash envelope budget? All of our expenses (minus regularly recurring bills) are done in this fashion. Using cash only often means that we have A LOT of spare change at the end of each week. Now, I understand that some people who use this system utilize all of the change in their expenses, however, we do not. All of our spare change goes into a glass jar. That jar is currently designated for our Disneyland trip. It will go towards our gas for driving.
My goal is to have $50 in spare change by the time we head to Disney (mid December). I added up our change this week to see how close we are, and we were at $37! I figure that I end up with between $2-4 per week. At that rate, I should have no problem hitting the $50 mark.
This isn't really "saving" money, but rather utilizing money that otherwise is just wasted. It's found money!
We also received a $15 gas station gift card last week. We tucked that away into our Disney envelope, too. We still have more gas money to save, but we are on our way!
What do you do with your "spare change"? Do you use it to pay for groceries? Save it? Use it to pay kids for chores? I'd love to hear what you do!
Wow, Jessica, this is amazing! I love Disneyland, but it always seems so out of reach price-wise. But if you've saved almost $1,000.... Well, now I'm off to read your post about cash envelope budgeting!
ReplyDeleteI hope I can inspire to you to take the dive to Disney! Woo hoo! It's so much fun, and it really is affordable if you plan it well. And cash envelope budgeting is the BEST! When we do it, we stay in budget, and even save! When we don't, we are always over budget, and we cannot save a single penny! It takes a little bit of time to get used to, but it is definitely worth it (in my opinion!)
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