Cash has some advantages over debit cards when you’re trying to stay within budget. With a debit card, it’s very easy to make multiple small purchases that may not seem like much, but can be large when taken together. If you are the type of person who gets to the counter and picks up that extra pack of gum, the newest magazine, or whatever is being featured by the cash register, then you might be an impulse buyer. This type of behavior can wreck a budget, especially if you are whipping out your debit card and not tallying the total cost at the end of the month.

To steer clear of impulse purchases, give yourself your entertainment money when you get paid. If you’ve made a budget, then you should know how much discretionary income you have each month to save or spend. Put some away for a rainy day and use the rest for your entertainment.

Let’s assume that your entertainment budget is $80/month and you get paid biweekly. Then, each pay period you should give yourself $40 in cash to use however you please. But once it’s gone, it’s gone, and you can’t swipe the debit card. This should be independent of gas costs, which need to be factored into your budget for necessary expenses.

Suddenly, when you start using cash for your entertainment, you will begin to take much more notice of unnecessary and frivolous expenses. One $5 latte at your coffee joint for 10 days is going to eat up $50 of your entire entertainment budget! It’s at that point that you begin to realize how the seemingly little expenses balloon quite quickly. This will help you to establish some discipline in your spending as you see the dollars disappearing from your pocket and the time stretching to your next paycheck.

If you find yourself struggling from paycheck to paycheck, it might be due to a series of small expenses that have gotten out of hand. While you can take out a payday advance to float you to your next paycheck, this strategy only works if you are able to repay the amount on your next paycheck cycle without jeopardizing other bills. If you can’t reign in your spending because you are using a debit card and can’t tell until the end of the month how much money you have left in your account, then try doing a cash budget for a couple of months to see where the money goes.

Another way that you can use the same strategy with your debit card is to have an online bank account. These accounts show your recent purchases and can allow you to see how you are spending your money from month to month. The only problem is that you might not have the discipline to stop spending the money on small items, the way you can when you have only a set amount of cash to spend per week. The visual imagery of the dollar bills can help you to estimate what you can afford to buy and what you can’t as the days go by.

This will allow you to keep the payday advance for true emergencies and help you to keep a balanced budget. It will most certainly help you to repay the payday advance when it becomes due too.

Other articles of interest:

• Making a Budget And Sticking To It
• You Can Make It Happen With A Budget
• Living on a Budget
• Living Within Your Budget During a Cash Crisis

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