Why We Have a Gift Envelope

div class=”separator” style=”clear: both; text-align: center;”a href=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2Hj0KgZhm-M/Tcl8yY9B_aI/AAAAAAAAAZg/sOQvITV2XAo/s1600/giftenvelope.png” imageanchor=”1″ style=”margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;”img border=”0″ height=”200″ src=”http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2Hj0KgZhm-M/Tcl8yY9B_aI/AAAAAAAAAZg/sOQvITV2XAo/s200/giftenvelope.png” width=”199″ //a/divbr /br /I finally have been able catch up on some blogs since I had a little time to myself em{yay nap time!!}/em I came across a few financial blogs that actually list out their income and their complete budget. I enjoy reading how people budget their money because strikeI’m nosey/strike it is always good to learn tips from other people em{and I’m nosey}./embr /br /bspan class=”Apple-style-span” style=”font-size: x-small;” Note* You will not ever find me posting our income or ALL of our payments because I know some of my readers and that would just be weird./span/bbr /br /I will, however, talk about my a href=”http://www.daveramseyroad.com/2011/03/our-envelope-system.html”envelopes /aand how much I put in there. Today I’m addressing the bGift Envelope/b. I noticed on many of the blogs that listed out their entire income/expense did not have a budgeted item for gifts.br /br /bWhy?/bbr /br /I don’t know how they plan for things like birthdays, weddings, and Christmas, but I found it became essential for our family.br /bbr //bbr /bOur Gift Envelope does several things for us:/bbr /br /olliIt takes away the stress of figuring out how to pay for gifts at Christmastime./liliWe have the money available for gifts for others./liliMy husband can buy me gifts and not tell me how much or where he got them from./li/olbr /The first is a no-brainer. We have had three years of cash Christmases and it is a wonderful feeling to know that there is no bill coming in January for the presents we purchased in December. I’ll admit, when we first started it was weird to take $100 each paycheck starting in January and stuff it in an envelope. However, because we had cash on hand, I could start Christmas shopping when I found deals in the fall. It became much more fun to shop!br /br /The second one takes a lot of pressure off our finances. If you have kids that are elementary age or older they might go to 1 or 7 birthday parties in a year. It was a bit irritating to suddenly have an invitation and then have to figure out where the money was going to come from. Now if my kids have friends birthday parties, we just use the cash from our envelope. I do set a price limit for birthday gifts because one year my daughter went to at least 7 parties and it gets priceyem {especially for girls!}/embr /br /The third benefit is just a relief for me and my husband. Mother’s Day was the perfect example for #3.br /I am the financial person in our family. I like to pay the bills and balance the checkbookem {crazy, I know.} /emThat means I access our bank account for our family quite often. Prior to having cash in envelopes, we would only use our debit card. This meant a lot more checking on the account to make sure we never overspent. When it was a holiday where my hubby would buy me a gift, he would use the debit card. Inevitably, I would decide to balance the account and accidentally see exactly what he spent and where. The surprise was gone. I would also feel guilty because he would spend em{what I thought} /emwas too much on me.nbsp;With our gift envelope, my husband can go buy presents and pay cash. I am completely surprised when I actually get the gift because I have no idea when or where he purchased it. I also don’t feel guilty because the money is budgeted for gifts and he doesn’t tell me how much he spent i{good bye guilt!!}/i. This makes it much more enjoyable for him and me!br /br /Now that you know how we use our gift envelope, this might be a good time to remind you that Christmas is only 7 months away i{where is this year going….heck where has the last decade gone?!?}/i. nbsp;If you put away just $100 a month, that is $700 cash for Christmas.br /br /No worries, no stress, and best of all….NO DEBT!!br /br /a href=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” target=”_blank”img alt=”Anna” border=”0″ src=”http://www.aghdesigns.com/images/blogs/siggy4.png” //a