My envelope system has taken a back seat the past two months. There is no reason for it except laziness. We are still budgeting, and keep track of everything spent. We don’t spend over our specified amount, and if we do, then it has to come from somewhere else – like eating out, so I try not to spend extra.
Luckily our emergency fund is still doing well. Each month we save and put money in our retirement and savings and keep growing our emergency fund as well. We then use this fund for a few non emergencies.
Yes I know – this is against all the ‘rules’, but it works for us.
This month we’ve got taxes, (UH!) new tires for the car and a medical expense. Luckily we’ve got an emergency fund that will cover all of this without a problem for us. Way back when we started our emergency fund we specified what could be covered by the money. Eating out – no. Car expenses – yes.
Putting our boundaries and priorities onto our emergency fund helped our marriage.
Having this discussion very early on before we needed to, preventing possible future yelling and angry moments.
We know that we both agreed to tires from the emergency fund – and actually had put money into the fund just for that purpose.
Now, your situation might be different. We have seven months of living expenses in our emergency fund, so we can take ‘non emergencies’ from it.
Everyone should try to get six months of living expenses into your fund. We have a bit extra so we can take taxes, tires and such.
We also know that we can get it back up to full fund within the next month.
Before our fund had this much in it, we would save separately for items such as tires and taxes, being careful never to touch our fund. Now that we have enough in our fund, we can use it as a sort of floating fund for non regular expenses.
Save into your emergency fund, use your envelopes, make it work for you so you can manage it as it is right for you and your family.