I have been using weekly money jars ( A la Gail Vaz Oxlade) for years now. Out of all the organizational things I have done to become money aware, proactive and in control, it is probably in my top 3 for most effective.
I get paid only once a month. Before jars I would be out of money long before I was out of days in the month. That is where the credit card debt began, I suspect. It would be a frantic period where (usually) the bills were paid but we were scrambling for gas, groceries etc to get to the end of the month.
After watching Til Debt Do Us Part, I decided to create a weekly pay day for myself and that would be the day I would take my jar money out of the bank. Now not all months are that perfect 28 days so I would add a day to each payday 'week' to make the weeks as balanced as possible. I preamp it out on my Moms Calendar and put stars on each payday. I am not one for really being able to stick to things and I am so proud that I have I stuck with this imaginary pay day for 5 years!
The categories I made for my jars have tweaked a bit over the years in terms of titles and amounts. Right now I have Groceries and home, entertainment, gas and spending. The gas money really goes in a wallet in my car and the spending money really goes in my wallet, but entertainment and Groceries go in physical jars I keep in my room.
While I am faithful to the amount of cash I pull out each week for my payday, I am not always faithful to the purpose of each jar. I have noticed it getting more and more blurred as time has gone on. Most of it gets spent on groceries and very little goes into .... say... entertainment. And while I understanding the jars are arbitrary and I am the one who decided on them...and there is no jar police coming after me if I use the entertainment money for gas, I do feel like I need to either just use one jar, or go back to the pure intention of the jars.
Reasons for using One jar: simplicity; some weeks flux and you might need more or less in a category.
Reasons for using the four jars: getting a more accurate read on what I am spending for groceries, gas etc; actually HAVING money in the entertainment jar should something actually happen in my life where I am going to be entertained; feeling like I have more control again.
So after much deliberation, I have decided that I am going to be true to the jars again until Dec 31st. After that I will be able to know which works best for me, helps me to spend my money more responsibly, feels more natural, and makes me feel more in control while it not becoming a chore to organize.
I know there are lots of you out there who use jars or envelopes or highly developed discipline to keep it all organized using your debit or credit card.
For variable spending, do you have one category....or a few?
3 comments:
I can completely relate. At the very beginning of my budget, I had $60 food, $40 misc. (personal items/toiletries/clothes/anything non-food), $50 gas. That was it. Over time, I found I was either spending a majority on food or a majority in misc items. I renamed the whole thing "FMG" or food, misc, gas money. Now it's $200 and as long as I don't go over the total, money can flow freely between categories.
I know *exactly* where you're coming from... we did the *separate* jar thing forever... but then i'd dig into the other jars if there was a good grocery sale, or we wouldn't need much in the way of food and i'd use that elsewhere, etc... so as of right now i'm just pulling out xx amount of money for the week and using it for whatever we need. I may change this next month however as i'm having a no/low spend September as I think a lot of us will need it after a spendy summer! ;)
We don't use the jar method for budgeting but I can see how it would be very hard. You set a reasonable timeframe to stick to the jars. If it doesn't work, you can tweak it after that.
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