What's The Deal? - Visa Buxx Cards
Visa Buxx Cards offer check card functionality with a limited balance. They are meant for teens who want to have a credit card but whose parents are not too keen on the idea. I think they are a good tool to manage spending without going fully to credit or letting a bad night wipe out your checking account. Parents can add funds to the card on their schedule using a bank account or a credit card. I like that feature. When the funds are gone they are gone, until the next load. There are three banks who offer these cards to the public at large. National City, US Bank, and Wachovia.
I am looking into using these cards for my wife and I to control our spending to set monthly maximum. We used to have a sort of "allowance" arrangement that fell to the side when we stopped having two incomes (my wife is in school). Living on just my income and school loans has been tough at times and I think there has been some spending that we didn't really need to do. For that reason I'd like to setup a budget and I think this is a good tool to keep us honest.
Overall the fees aren't that bad. I'm willing to pay a few dollars here and there to have a good control over our spending.
All three cards have a pretty extensive cardholder agreement which lists a lot of fees. The formats aren't very useful for comparing, so I created one that is.
Here it is:
Click to Show HTML Table
I highlighted fees that would be relevant to me in bold red. I wanted to isolate which provider is the best deal as I would use the card. It looks like Wachovia is the winner, but I have some more research to do.
If and when I decide to do this I will post about the actual experience.
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You would be crazy to do this, better to instigate a competition where by you for instance would only play golf once a month instead of two a saving of say $40 and she instead of a $100 hair cut would go say to fantastic sams for $20 a $80 saving think of all the ways you can save in a month and see who wins
Jimmy - Thanks for reading. I agree, but we've been down that road and basically it's not enough. In order to control spending to a set limit I need a technical solution. Not that what you are suggesting is a bad idea, but I need more in this situation. I'm not sure why it's "crazy", but I agree your plan would work for people with the discipline to stick to the rules.
