With the economy still in such bad shape, I think that it is imperative that people pay more attention to really budgeting. I know so many people who just spend money as if it grows on trees. They just have not paid any real attention to how much they spend versus how much they make. Yes, many of these people are wealthy and never had to worry about it, but some of them are not wealthy at all; they just have not learned how to budget.

A Prepaid Mastercard is a good way to have money available to you without the risk of carrying cash around.  For the past couple of days I’ve been thinking about getting a Prepaid Debit Card or Prepaid Credit Card to put in my wallet instead of cash.  I started thinking about that when I ran into a friend of mine was mugged recently and lost a couple of hundred dollars.

Now I’m not the type to carry around a couple of hundred dollars, but I do tend to empty my pockets at night and it always surprises me to see how much loose change I’ve accumulated throughout the day!

One of the benefits to carrying a prepaid card instead of cash is that the money is protected via the need to use a PIN number, so if you lose the card no one else can get their hands on your money!  And once the cash limit is reached on the card it will not let you “overspend” so you won’t get penalized with “over limit” fees.