Divide your cash into pre-paid cards?

oshirowanen

Branching off from this thread

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3798553/divide-your-cash-into-envelopes = Divide your cash into envelopes.

Instead of creating many accounts and moving money from account to account as you spend. Wouldn't be be better to buy or get pre-paid and/or single use credit or debit cards or some other form of card? When you can simply top them up on a monthly bases, label them "fuel money", "food money", "bills money" and so on?

Any reason why this cannot be done?

Gromitt

A lot of my bills are not payable with a credit or debit card.

With the envelopes, you know instantly how much money you have in each. With the cards, you would have to check regularly, otherwise it could be embarassing to find out you have insufficient funds on your fuel / food card, and even worse if you need emergency cash (eg. you overfuelled and don't have that amount on either card, then you are left with a non-payment slip).

dalesrider

Have you looked at the charges many of these per-paid card have....

thatsean

as Dalesrider states, none of these cards are free, and moving money one to another might be very hard - especially if with different provider. Whilst its' a different solution to simply having say 3 savings accounts and one current and moving money around when it suits, I don't think its any better.

MoneySavingUser

Might not have FSCS protection: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/consumertips/8781172/Pre-paid-card-users-unprotected.html

opinions4u

Get interest in savings accounts?

Pay multiple fees on prepaid cards?

Let me think about it ....