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Cash stuffing, the trendy money management hack, has reportedly helped 31-year-old TikToker Jasmine Taylor clear off around $70,000 in debt. The content creator from Amarillo, Texas, even turned the experience into a successful business venture.
Taylor told CNBC news that she began her money management journey in 2021 during a difficult time in her life. At the time, the former lost her full-time job and took up side hustles like delivering food for DoorDash and prescriptions for pharmacies.
For the uninitiated, cash stuffing is the act of separating money in different folders based on necessities and utilities.
When she started out, Taylor had $60,000 in student loan debt, around $9,000-$10,000 in credit card debt, and $8,000 in medical debt. Taylor said:
“I just remember wondering how I was going to make it through the next month.”
She then found out about stuffing cash through YouTube and embarked upon her budgeting journey. Taylor even shared her experience on TikTok and garnered a significant following:
“I found cash budgeting and I literally stuck to it. I would only spend what I had in cash.”
The 31-year-old eventually went viral online for her cash stuffing posts and money management strategies. Taylor was reportedly able to pay off $23,000 in her student loan debt and clear her medical debt and credit card balance in the first year of getting her money.
She also established her own venture, Baddies and Budgets, that sells money courses, budgeting supplies, and other accessories. CNBC reported that the company made about $850,000 in 2022 and is on track to make approximately $1 million this year.
Exploring the meaning of cash stuffing
Cash stuffing is a money management hack that went viral among GenZ social media users back in 2022.
The process involves drawing out money from bank accounts and segregating the cash to place into different labeled envelopes for necessities such as rent, groceries, dining out, shopping, gas, and bills, among others.
Followers of the hack set aside a particular amount that they plan to spend over each of the aforementioned categories per month or week and put the specific cash into a separate envelope while keeping the rest in a savings folder.
Some people also use other creative methods to stuff their money, like keeping it in a stuffing binder, glass bottles, mason jars, coffee mugs, pairs of old shoes, or even under mattresses.
Cash stuffing is often described as a fun way to set a monthly or weekly budget to save money. Jasmine Taylor explained the concept of cash stuffing as “taking your normal budget if you have one, and just implementing it with cash.”
She told Good Morning America that people can start with a budget, divide the necessities into categories using envelopes, pull cash from the bank and stuff the allotted amount of money into each envelope or category.
Personal finance author Rachel Cruze also told GMA that the journey to stuff cash begins with a budget:
“Say, hey, here’s my income for the month, minus all of my expenses, including giving and saving. And this is what I have to work with. And when you tell your money what to do, which is a budget, it gives you a level of freedom.”
Cruze further added:
“One great thing about budgeting and cash stuffing is, it gives you the ability to make choices before you go and make a purchase. It just brings this level of intentionality.”
Reports suggest that the cash stuffing method gained popularity among TikTokers like Taylor around the holidays and became a viral trend among GenZ users.
A look into Jasmine Taylor’s cash stuffing journey
Jasmine Taylor opened up about her cash stuffing journey while speaking to Good Morning America and said that she decided to try budgeting when she realized she was “not managing” her money. She said she “just needed to take accountability” for her “previous financial mistakes.”
Taylor began by studying her debt and earnings and began researching about budgeting styles. She finally decided to try cash stuffing after skimming through methods where she failed to achieve success. The TikToker said the stuffing method allowed her to honestly evaluate her finances and debt:
“When you’re in debt and you have financial issues, you kind of hide it sometimes. I really made it a point to go in and just take a look at what [it] was so that I could make a plan going forward.”
Taylor said that following an assessment, she was “shocked” to find out about her own impulsive spending:
“When you add it all up at the end of the month, it’s four or five hundred dollars, and I’m wondering why I’m struggling to pay certain bills or struggling to make it to the next check. And there’s this money that’s unaccounted for that I was wasting frivolously, impulsively spending.”
Taylor said she started posting about her journey on social media to take accountability. She then turned her budgeting into a business by selling her own cash stuffing envelopes and similar money management items online.
GMA reported that Taylor used a stimulus check to invest in her business, which she launched on her 30th birthday in April 2021:
“I started out making my own items for my own budget and more people were just interested in asking where can I get these things. I bought a Cricut, I bought some inventory, hosted my Shopify site and I just started.”
The content creator also shared that her biggest lesson in the journey was about learning to not rush the process:
“When I was paying off student loan debt, I felt like I needed to get it paid off now, I needed to throw every single dollar at it, and you didn’t get the debt overnight. So it’s OK, if it takes more than a little bit of time to get it paid off.”
She continued:
“It’s more about building the financial muscle, learning the consistency to consistently make debt payments, pay on time, pay extra.”
Jasmine Taylor continues to manage her business while uploading budgeting content on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Meanwhile, she still reportedly used the cash stuffing method to manage her monthly expenses and savings.
