My sister's spreadsheet made me ditch my cash envelope system

I've been doing the cash envelope thing for 3 years, but my sister showed me her simple Google Sheet last Tuesday and it hit different. She tracks every dollar in one tab and has a column for 'money I almost spent' which is basically a guilt list. Seeing her 5 year payoff plan for $12,000 of car debt in plain numbers made me realize I was hiding from the actual math, not saving better. Has anyone else switched from physical cash to a digital tracker and felt weird about it at first?

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gavin_knight391mo ago

Swapped my cash envelopes for a simple spreadsheet about a year back and yeah, it felt super weird at first. Like I was cheating on something, even though the numbers were exactly the same. Seeing everything in one place, including the debt, kind of stung but in a good way. That 'almost spent' column your sister has is genius, I just have a notes app list of stuff I talked myself out of buying and it helps more than I expected. The envelope system let me lie to myself about the bigger picture, like I was doing great when I was just shuffling cash around. Now I actually look at the totals every Sunday and it's way less scary than I thought it would be, just more honest.