Cash is King

Every time I used to enter items into our budget database, I always had an uneasy feeling before I looked at how much we spent on food so far for the month. I tried to be aware of this amount before going grocery shopping, but it just seemed like I always ended up spending more than budgeted for the month.

I finally decided to try paying cash for all our food. In the past I was worried about doing this because I didn't want to carry a lot of cash around or I thought it would be hard to keep track of the cash. It's actually not so bad when you break it down by week instead of having all the money for the month in your wallet, which is what I've learned to do.

I've been doing this for a few weeks now and I LOVE paying with cash. I finally feel like I am in control of our budget and I always know exactly how much money we have left for the month. I have never felt this way using my debit card (sad but true). Another benefit is that my children see how money is transacted. This was something that concerned me because they used to see me just running my debit/credit card through a machine like it's "magic" and we get our groceries for free. I remember my mom using cash to buy groceries when I was younger, and I like to think it instilled in me some valuable financial lessons.

I know this is not a new concept and most people reading this will probably say, "what took you so long?" but I just wanted to record this for my own purposes.

Now I just need to work on our "miscellaneous" budget category! :0)