FOR years, the advice around keeping cash at home has been clear: it can leave your money vulnerable to theft, loss or the temptation to spend it. Yet the envelope savings challenge asks people to do something that appears to run counter to that advice: physically set aside cash and watch their savings build.

So, can the envelope method actually work, and if it does, should the money stay in the envelope? The answer may depend less on the envelope itself and more on what it is designed to achieve. For accountant, entrepreneur and financial coach Grace Aitcheson-Anderson, the physical act of seeing money accumulate can help people who struggle to save develop the habit of putting money aside.

“So if this week they have $5,000, next week they have two, they’re actually creating a habit,” Aitcheson-Anderson told the Jamaica Observer.