The end of February is here, as is the end of my frugal and happy experiment of getting reacquainted with cash.  How did I do?  Well, I just inputted all my expenses for this month into Quicken and learned I spent 9% less in February than in January, a pretty good result!  If I can keep this up, over the next year I could end up with almost 10% more in savings than I would have otherwise had, all from just using cash.

What else did I learn?

Plan ahead to have the cash you need in your wallet. There were a few times this month where I did not have cash on me because I just hadn’t taken the time to move money from the envelope on my desk to my wallet.  In the one case I remember specifically, I then had to put my dinner bill on my credit card (because I’d already eaten dinner by this point and thought they’d frown on the excuse that I couldn’t pay for dinner because I had no cash…)

My promise to use cash did make me change my behavior. A few times when I was driving home at night I thought I’d stop by a fast food joint to grab dinner.  At a stoplight I’d fish my wallet out of my purse to see how much money I had.  Because there were several times when I didn’t plan ahead, I had $1 or just a handful of change (with in this case, actually did work in my favor).  So, no cash, no fast food and no wasted money on a bunch of fried meals I didn’t need anyway. And hopefully in the future I’ll remember that a better, cheaper dinner was just as easy to grab out of the fridge when I got home.

Using cash saves time in terms of tracking money. In the past, when I used my credit card to buy things on a regular basis, I’d enter the expenses into Quicken and keep the receipts. Then, when the credit card statement came, I’d have to go line by line comparing my bill with Quicken to make sure all the charges were correct before shredding the receipts.  In essence, I was having to revisit all those purchases twice.  This month, I just entered all the cash expenses in Quicken and dumped the receipts in the recycle bin - I won’t have to deal with them again.

Since I’m pleased with the results of this little experiment, I’ve decided to make using cash a habit.  I’ve already gone to the bank to withdraw cash for March.  Now, all I have to do is to remember to put it in my wallet!