Managing money isn’t always easy. While most of us have good intentions about saving our money and not overspending, every once in awhile, we’re tempted to buy something we weren’t planning on buying. These impulse buys can really add up. In addition, with inflation on necessary items like gas and groceries, we can spend more than we were expecting pretty easily.

When you swipe a credit card, spending money isn’t always painful, that is, until you get the credit card bill. When you hand someone cash, it feels a little bit more real that you’re actually going to have less money than you used to have. Spending cash sometimes makes us think twice about those impulse buys.

One popular TikTok video explains how to create a budget and stay within your budget by spending cash instead of using credit cards. This is called the envelope method or cash stuffing. All you need is cash, envelopes and the desire to stay within your budget.

Watch this viral TikTok video below.

@humphreytalks Budgeting for beginners with Envelopes. #personalfinance #budget #money #rent #cash #saving #wealth ♬ original sound – Humphrey Yang

Did you catch that? You basically create envelopes for each category of spending and then put your cash in the envelopes so that you don’t overspend. While it seems easy enough, you might have a few questions, like, what about places that don’t accept cash? And what if you run out of money in an envelope?

Jamila Souffrant explained this cash stuffing method in more detail to Good Morning America hosts Amy Robach and T.J. Holmes. Watch the video below to learn what steps to take to get started using the cash stuffing budgeting method and how credit cards play into this method.

Do you budget your money? Do you have trouble with impulse buys and overspending? Do you think the cash stuffing method would be a helpful way to stick to a budget?