Stick To Your Holiday Spending Budget By Using A Prepaid Credit Card

Halloween is over, and we’ve entered the month of November which means the holiday shopping season has officially started. We’ll see countless reminders to avoid overspending and/or going into debt buying gifts. This is great advice, but easier said than done.

Prepaid Credit Card Advantages

A prepaid credit card loaded with the amount of your holiday budget can help you follow this advice. Here is a list of some of the ways using a prepaid credit card can help keep your holiday spending in check as well as a few advantages it has over other payment methods:

  • No Forgotten Purchases: Purchases made with a debit or credit card can easily be overlooked leading to a blown holiday budget. The balance of your prepaid holiday spending credit card will always accurately reflect how much money you have left to spend.
  • Online Shopping: I’m a big proponent of cash only spending, but with more and more shopping being done online, this becomes impossible. A prepaid credit card can be used for both in store and online shopping.
  • Easier To Surprise Significant Other: Couples with joint finances find it difficult to surprise each other with holiday gifts if they both are monitoring accounts and can see posted transactions. Buying each other’s gifts using a prepaid holiday spending credit card will preserve the element of surprise and make gift giving more fun.
  • Conscious budgeting: If you do reach the end of your holiday budget, you can make a conscious decision as to if you want to increase your holiday budget by loading more onto your prepaid holiday spending credit card and by how much.

Prepaid Credit Card Disadvantages

There are also a few disadvantages to using a prepaid credit card for your holiday spending:

  • Initial Cost: A prepaid credit card will cost a few dollars, but when you take into account how much it may save you by keeping you with your holiday spending parameters, this may be a cost worth incurring.
  • Using Full Balance: It may be difficult to use every last penny on your prepaid credit card. Check out this previous article here on EOD on tips to get that balance all the way to zero.

Holiday shopping can be hard. You want to buy nice things for your loved ones, but you don’t want to put yourself in a financial bind by doing so. A prepaid credit card helps keep track of exactly how much you have left in your holiday budget without limiting where you can shop.

How about you, EOD Nation, how do you keep your holiday spending in check?

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