Budget Beans

So I happened across an article about practice ideas for my students and decided to modify one of them to use as a budget helper.......and "Budget Beans" was born!

I made one jar for "Budget Beans" and one jar for "Spent Beans".  Each bean represents $1.00.  So I filled the "Budget Bean" jar with the number of beans to correspond with the amount we have to spend on "flexible expenses" - meaning the money we have left over after all the "fixed" expenses are paid, like rent, utilities, insurance, savings, etc.

Then for each dollar spent, I put a bean into the "Spent Beans" jar - it's a little tedious, but kind of a fun experiment.  First, it gives me an immediate visual of how much of our budget we have spent at any given time and second, I'm wondering if that visual will remind me again, that I may not "need" something I think I need.  My goal is to always have some beans left at the end of each month and to add this to our savings account.

So far, I can tell we are doing pretty well this month, we are about half way through the month and are a little less than half way through our beans, so this will help me gauge how much to spend or not to spend for the rest of the month.

This might be a fun way for anyone to "see" their budget, but it might be a fun way to teach kids about the value of money or one could even use it to show kids how to save - by adding a bean to a jar for each dollar saved.......the more full the jar becomes, the more money they have saved.  I'm sure there are endless possibilities.....who says beans are just for eating??