Are you still carrying around a walletful of credit cards, or are you using more cash these days? According to MarketWatch, a growing number of people are using cash to control spending as the recession deepens.
The Federal Reserve reports that consumer credit fell at an annual rate of 3.75% in November. Meanwhile, Americans increased their savings rate to 2.8% of disposal income. A year ago it was around 1%.
Studies have shown that we spend less when using cash. So what's in your wallet? Have you changed your purchasing habits to control your spending? We'd love to know.
Yes I have. I've begun to use envelopes to categorize my cash spending. trying to avoid trips to the ATM and using my debit card to make purchases. Take out enough money on payday to cover all those cash expenses.
Posted by: Brian | January 26, 2009 at 07:06 PM
yes, we switched to a cash system on Jan 1st, for gas, groceries and miscellaneous category. The rest are bills.
Posted by: Gina & Pete | January 27, 2009 at 09:41 PM
Same here, cash withdrawal on payday and using envelopes. Today is payday and I still have some cash left from the last one. I'm removing my debit cards from my wallet right now!
Posted by: Brian | January 30, 2009 at 11:16 AM