Ivy says:
I have read several bloggers who say they spend less money when they deal only in cash. I am the opposite, it seems to be such a pain to me to have to save the receipt and enter in how much I spent in my financial tracking software, that I hesitate a lot more before using my debit card. On the other hand, if I have cash, I spend pretty freely and then end up broke in no time.
This is one of those things that doesn’t work the same way for everyone. Some people spend more when they have cash, some people spend more when they are using debit/credit. As my mom says, “If I have cash, I spend cash, so I tend to try not to have much cash.”
The key is figuring out which sort of person you are, a cash spender or a card spender and making sure the method of payment you tend to spend more on is generally unavailable. It’s important to make sure you track where you are spending the most money- my downfall is going out to eat, other people’s downfall may be online shopping, while another person may love buying shoes. You have to try to avoid that by making sure you have quick meals on hand, or staying out of the shoe store.
While this all might seem very obvious, tracking your spending may uncover things you never had any idea you spent a lot on- like my restaurant going, which seemed pretty minor to me, until I saw it on a chart.
Are you a cash-only type person or a card person? Where are your spending trouble-spots?
We were on almost exclusively credit to get the miles but when it was just too high every month to pay off we had to go totally debit. Now we are more aware of our spending and the fact that for a long time more was going out than was coming in.
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