Finance & Loans

A Green Dot Card Can Help You Manage Your Budget

You’ve heard of the envelope method of managing your budget, haven’t you? Dave Ramsey, financial guru, talks about it in his Financial Peace seminars. That’s where you decide up front how much money you have to spend in each category such as groceries, gas, etc. and you create separate envelopes for each expenditure type. When your envelope is empty in that category for that month, you can’t spend any more money.

Prepaid debit cards such as a Green Dot card would serve the same purpose. With prepaid debit cards, you can preload the amount of money for your budget and when use only that card for that expenditure. When the card’s empty, you’re out of money for that category for that month. Let’s say, for example, that you purchase a Green Dot card and load $100 on it to represent your eating- out budget for the month. If on the 20th of the month you’ve exhausted that card, you don’t eat out for the rest of the month. Pretty, simple, right?

You can use prepaid debit cards, as tools to help you manage your money because they’re loaded with a specific dollar amount and you can’t spend more than is on the card. This is a good way of learning how to live within your means or within a preset spending budget. With credit cards, the temptation to buy something you can’t afford it too easily accomplished because your credit limit is much higher.