Old habits die hard during times of difficulty. When money gets tight it’s easy to start looking like your grandma or great grandma, stuffing cash into their bra—or under their mattresses. Just look at Silicon Valley Bank, which reads like a modern version of a bank run from a book like “Mary Poppins,” or in real life, the Great Depression. The TikTok version of handling and hoarding money has dropped, and it’s known as cash stuffing.
Of course, the TikTok version is a bit more aestheticized and polished than previous generations’ takes on budgeting. Trending videos with up to 200,000 likes usually show a pair of hands sorting wads of cash into various envelopes that all have different budgeting purposes: including gas, groceries, and eating out. The idea of the activity—making budgeting money more of a tangible thing—is that people will stop their spending once they reach the allotted limit of cash in each envelope. Because you can see yourself draining the cash, unlike a credit card, it might be easier to stick to your guns.
