Money Organizing Envelopes

We started doing the Dave Ramsey Total Money Makeover in August 2010.  For those of you not familiar with the Total Money Makeover, it's basically a system to carefully budget your money and save for what you need while paying off your debt.  Although we were carefully saving money for unexpected expenses, we did not have nearly enough saved to cover the medical expenses incurred by our miscarriage in June 2011.  At that point, we didn't know what else to do except quit doing the plan while we figured out our finances and got back on our feet.  Well, it took awhile, and then Christmas rolled around, and we never got back on the plan.  Right around Christmas we paid off our car, and that reminded me that we needed to get back on our budget.  I pulled out our old, dirty, worn out paper envelopes and immediately I wanted something nicer.  I thought about making my own, but I didn't want to put that much time and effort into it.  Luckily, I found these binder pouches on clearance at Walmart.

The front of the pouches do have see-through windows.  I didn't really want to leave them as see-through windows since there is going to be money in them.  Okay, maybe it is obvious that there is money in them because of how they are labeled... but still, it just doesn't seem very modest to be showing off your money.  I like to leave some things to the imagination. ;)  So I took the cardboard that was inside the pouches, turned it around, and wrote what each was for on the opposite side with a marker.

I had some of these binder rings on hand.  I used them to hook all of my envelopes together.

Pretty easy.  Now I have something nice and sturdy in which to organize my money.