A Prepaid Credit Card can be a marvelous tool for managing your holiday and family budget.
A friend of mine (named Compton) recently decided to try and put a stop to his family's growing love affair with credit cards. The issue was simple. Everyone (his wife, both teenage daughters, and his son in college) thought that credit cards were a convenient way to pay for most things, but none of them had any grasp of the household budget.
Compton had a family meeting and began by reclaiming everyone's Visas and MasterCards. After that he explained the concept of budgeting (and, he admits, this is difficult to do with a teenager without sounding condescending). Then he handed out new prepaid cards. He explained to the wife and kids that they now had a set monthly allowance and that their card would be recharged on the tenth of each month. If they ran out of money on the third, they'd have to figure out how to live for that week without spending anything…
For the first couple of months there was a lot of complaining. But six months down the road now Compton says the system works beautifully – and one daughter has started saving money on the card to use for a future vacation trip she plans to take with friends.
