50 Category Ideas for Your Cash Envelopes

Why Cash Envelopes?

If you’re struggling with your budget or saving for irregular bills, one of the best and most practical ways to stay on track is to use cash envelopes; a budgeting system made popular by Dave Ramsey.

You can set up as many or as few envelopes as you like, it’s a completely flexible system you set up according to your own needs.

You can find out more about the cash envelope budget system here.

Related reading: 10 Dave Ramsey Money Saving Tips for Christmasย 

50 Category Ideas for Your Cash Envelopes

Obviously, you won’t need to use all of these category ideas but hopefully they will act as prompts for spending categories you might have missed on your initial list.

These ideas for your cash envelopes are presented in no particular order:

  1. Utilities
  2. Insurances
  3. Medical & pharmaceutical
  4. Irregular bills
  5. Groceries
  6. Eating out
  7. Work lunches
  8. Entertainment
  9. Sports/activities
  10. Movies
  11. Outings with friends
  12. Outings with family
  13. Date nights
  14. Starbucks
  15. Pet Accessories
  16. Vet costs
  17. Back to school
  18. Kidsโ€™ allowance
  19. Toys & play equipment
  20. Kidsโ€™ clothes
  21. School lunches
  22. School excursions, etc.
  23. Books
  24. Shoes
  25. Accessories
  26. Gardening items
  27. Yard maintenance
  28. Car maintenance
  29. Household items
  30. Cleaning products
  31. Tools
  32. Home Depot
  33. Spouse 1 โ€“ spending
  34. Spouse 2 โ€“ spending
  35. Hobbies/classes
  36. Craft supplies
  37. Home decor
  38. Clothes
  39. Cosmetics
  40. Toiletries
  41. Massages
  42. Salon & hair care
  43. Holiday gifts
  44. Birthday gifts
  45. DIY Projects
  46. Travel
  47. Technology
  48. Crazy cash (money you can spend without justification)
  49. Replacement items
  50. Donations/tithing

How many of these can you use? Did you think of other categories not included in the list? Make your suggestions in the comments so we can add them to this list.

Struggling with your budget or saving for irregular bills? The best and most practical way to stay on track to use cash envelopes. Here are 50 ideas for categories to use. Pin

Your Cash Envelope System

Using the cash envelope system means keeping a reasonable amount of cash on hand so you’ll want to keep it secure.

Keeping all your envelopes together makes it easier to keep track of them but can make you vulnerable.

The best idea is to keep your envelopes in a folder, file or planner in a secure location and remove cash for specific purchases as you need it. You definitely don’t want to carry all of it with you, all the time.

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Not sure where to start to organize your budget?

If you’re not sure where cash envelopes might fit into your budgeting strategy, we have some articles that are bound to help.


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