Cash envelope system test

1

Hi there

In an ongoing effort to tweak the budget I have come to a line item in my budget that seem a bit steep…

I spend around 425 CHF on average per month on the following:
Non-lidl food (small coop), post office, birthday gifts & cards, local farm eggs, restaurant, cafes, kiosk etc.

I would like that amount to be 150 CHF per month and that is the reason I’ll give the cash envelope system a go and see if it’ll work. Which would be great on a yearly basis:

Instead of 5100 chf/year it’d be 1800 chf/year which would be a cost save of 3300 chf/year.

For the gifts I’ll try to make them myself by either baking, doing some hand craft or making a voucher for some service I’d offer for free like babysitting, stay in our vacation flat etc. The kids are still small and receive a lot of gifts from family so we don’t buy them gifts yet. The biggest trap is absolutely the small but well stocked coop in the local village, so convenient and so extremely expensive. I go there with the intention to get bananas, milk and bread but come out with not only that but additionally discount meat, spices, candy, pizza dough etc etc.

If you are curious about the cash envelope system there are many videos on youtube for instructions. I think it could work specially well for areas where we usually overspend in.

I’ll report back and let you know how it went after this month :smile: Cheers!

3 Likes
2

If you can’t stop overspending at coop, you can try the radical solution - stop using it altogether. :slight_smile:

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3

there are things where saving money may not be all the best solution. A lot of small grocery store in the less populated villages are disappearing; but they do play an important role for the elderly and the social life of the village, chit chat etc. Retiring in a ghost village with no social life at all isn’t fun either.
Going to buy bread, milk etc may cost you some chf more (but including travel to an aldi far away it may be the same) but it gives a chance to the small coop to survive.

1 Like
4

Wouldn’t it be more reasonable to engage in local charity or community building activities, rather than inflate expenses to subsidy coop?

5

Let’s go back to the Migros Van!
:slight_smile:
You are all too “young” to know it eheh


(I didn’t read it, I hope it will explain a bit what they were)

6

There is no need to worry about this specific coop, its jam packed normally.