A Working Envelope

You might have wondered why we call our budget the "Modern" envelope budget. My grandma told me that she use to take my grandpa's paycheck, cash it, and then divide it up between her envelopes that represented all of her bills and things she would spend money on. What makes our budget different than my grandma's?
The concept behind our budget is exactly the same thing that my grandma did. The modern twist is a wonderful thing called "secondary savings accounts." Anyone that is living on a tight budget knows that every penny counts. Pennies really do add up. We discovered that our bank does secondary savings accounts. So instead of having a bunch of envelopes in our house collecting dust, we decided we'd have "modern" envelopes in the bank collecting interest. For each of our "envelope categories" we have a separate secondary savings account. Each month I can deposit money into these secondary savings accounts, just like my grandma put money into her envelopes. These modern envelopes work for you in two ways.
1. They earn interest. I know it isn't a lot. But pennies do add up. An example of this is that we enjoying going to plays. We figured out how much it costs for season tickets to a local theater, we divided that amount by twelve, and each month we stick that much into our "theater" envelope. The interest that is earned over the course of the year is enough to cover sales tax on the tickets. Thank you working envelope!
2. They envelopes are safe. Safe from me. When I deposit money into a certain envelope I am not as likely to spend it on something else by accident. When I get $10 for my birthday I can deposit it into MY fun money account and there is no way that it accidentally gets spent on the water bill. When we are saving up for a piano, the money in our "piano" account stays there for the piano. It doesn't get spent on dinner at our favorite restaurant by accident. The money is safe.
That is one thing that makes our budget a bit different than a traditional envelope budget. We have envelopes that are collecting pennies for us each month and that are keeping our pennies safe.