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My sister in law swears cash envelopes are the only way, but tracking one number beat her system by $340
Every time we visit my wife's family in Cincinnati, my sister in law pulls out her envelope folder and tells me I'm not really budgeting unless I'm splitting cash into little labeled piles. I finally tried her way for two months, and I spent so much time shuffling bills around that I lost track of the big picture. The thing she gets wrong is thinking more categories equals more control. When I went back to tracking one number, what I actually spend each month, I found $340 I'd been missing because it was slipping out in small stuff I never thought to put in an envelope. That's one number I can check in five minutes, versus her forty five minute sorting session every Sunday. The envelope method works if the physical act of handing over cash makes you think twice, and I get why it does for her. But it's not the only real way, and people who push it like gospel forget that. What's the one number you actually check each month, not the pile of categories you set up in January and forgot about?
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