For the month of November I am only going to use cash to buy things. I am going to say goodbye to my debit and credit cards and say hello to dollar bills and change. I started thinking about this idea when Bank of America announced all of their extra fees they are going to start charging people to use cards. That being said, I don’t use Bank of America so the extra fees don’t affect me. I have received mixed reviews from the people I spoke with about this idea. There responses were: “How are you going to do that?”, “How much are you going to have to take out?”, “Why?” etc. After hearing all of these reactions I knew I could call one person who would be able to support this effort. That person would be my dad; my guess is that he has probably used a credit card maybe 4 times this whole year. Since I was little he has always used cash to pay for everything; my mom on the other hand...that is a different story. :)- He told me that he knows I can do it, I just have to really budget how much I am going to spend.
This is where it becomes tough…a budget. I think half the reason I am doing this is to really start to think about what I am spending my money on. I do have a habit of not even looking at prices sometimes and I thought maybe if I start thinking more about it I could save some money. The second problem other than the budget is trying to figure out how much I should take out. I looked at my bank account and started to figure out how much I have spent for the past 3 months. It made me realize this is going to be tricky becuase I have spent different amounts of money each month…I also have to take into account that its a holiday month.
Here are my rules:
1. I can only take out money once
2. If something really bad happens (i.e. hospital visit) I can use my cards
3. I am paying for bills via direct deposit/cards i.e. Rent, Direct TV, Taekwondo ext.
So I will keep you updated on my ventures. I still don’t know how much I am going to take out. It should be an interesting month.
