My wife and I started putting a few hundred dollars per month away for Christmas back in October. We stashed the money in an ING savings account where it has earned about 2.75%. Now it’s December, and whether I like it or not, it’s time to do a little shopping. I’ve never been a big fan of malls, but I must admit that I find Christmas shopping more bearable than a normal outing. The buzz and cheerfulness is often contagious, if you can get past the long waits in line. Plus, like most people, I find great pleasure when finding that perfect gift for a loved one or friend.
So now that it’s time to spend this money, we have decided to use the envelope system to help keep ourselves honest when buying gifts. We have never tried this because we don’t find it to be very practical in our “cashless” society. Nonetheless, it is a tool that can be used to help enforce your monthly budget. I’m not quite sure how we’ll handle on-line purchases yet. My first thought is to pull the dollar amount spent on-line from the appropriate envelope, and then place it into another envelope entitled “to be deposited in checking account.”
We’ll see how this works and I’ll post my thoughts after the Holiday Season.
