Save Money – Spend Cash

Spending money is easier when you are spending it from a plastic card.  A credit card, or debit card linked to your bank account, it makes no difference.  It’s easier to part with more money, more frequently, if you’ve got the convenience of  just swiping the card and making a purchase.  That’s the premise I’m putting into action over the next few months.

I’ve been tracking my spending over the past few years by doing just the opposite of the above, by putting as many purchases as possible onto my debit card.  I use Mint.com to keep track of those transactions, the ones that my bank has conveniently decided should not be available via their website after 6 months.  Using Mint has the added benefit of automatically categorizing some of my expenses.  It’s categorizing system is not very good, I still have to manually tag most transactions, but it’s better than nothing.  Using these years of debit card transaction data as a baseline, how much can I avoid spending by forcing myself to spend cash when at all possible?

Stay tuned for the answer to this question in a future post!