Next time you step out of the house try this :
- Leave your credit card behind at home
- Withdraw cash from the ATM for your weekly budget needs
If you find yourself saving less than you would like or puzzling where all the money was spent when you get the credit card bill : here’s some scientific research for you.
Research shows that using Credit Cards Encourage Extra Spending
It gets worse: the above research also noted that the mere sight of seeing a credit card logo at restaurants made people spend more at the restaurant since credit cards are associated with spending.
On the contrary: the physical act of parting with cash makes you ration it out more carefully since there is only a limited quantity in your wallet or purse. Additionally, you’ll get better at budgeting how much money you need each week.
So here are the baby steps : Carry only cash in your wallet/purse. Carry a Debit card as backup for ATM withdrawals. Till you feel like your savings has increased, leave the credit card behind at home
But some places online credit card really saves money (as of now ) . in Amazon Pantry in India , if u have a icici credit card , you can get 20% cash back upto Rs 1200 per month , on 1st to 3rd of every month . I am using this facility for more than last 2 yrs (earlier it was 25% and max Rs 900 cash back ) and i was able to save Rs 800 on an avg on grocery items like sunflower oil,Ariel,Darjeeling tea . Not sure if this is available in Goa though . Plus also in Zomato ,Swiggy,Uber,Ola we are able to save some money .
But yeah i agree cash will restrict bit fof spending , but now a days to get cash is not so easy . In most of the places ATM is always out of cash .
Thank you so much for sharing all the places where you saved money using credit card. 20% cashback on Amazon Pantry is pretty awesome!! It is not available in Goa unfortunately nor are Ola, Uber, Swiggy sadly 🙁
I still recommend using cash if you are struggling to control your credit card bills especially when one’s income is also low. Cash forces a discipline where you cannot spend what you don’t have in your wallet at that time. Using credit card without discipline can dig a deep debt hole since the interest rates are very high in the range of 30-40% . It happened to me personally in my 20s where I used to have a bunch of credit cards and roll over the balance from one credit card to another to try and reduce my interest payments. It was a horrible time which was completely avoidable 🙁 Once I dug myself out of that hole I now have only one credit card and I pay off the balance each month.
If cash is not available in ATMs then the next best option is to use debit cards or prepaid cards. That will ensure that one does not spend more than what one has in their bank balance.
For people who have developed the discipline through cash spending, it makes sense to graduate to using credit cards and take advantage of the discounts and deals. Just last week my wife got a Citibank PremierMiles card where you get decent airline points for monthly spending. We plan to use this to fund our international travel at some point! I’ll blog about using credit cards for points or deals in the near future.
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