I participated in an Influencer Activation on behalf of Influence Central for American Express Serve. I applied for the Serve Cash Back card to facilitate my review and received a promotional item to thank me for my participation.
Budgeting is hard! It wasn’t something that came naturally to me and I worry how on earth I am going to help my children do better than I did. One of my favorite ways to budget is using the cash/envelope method. It is so much easier to keep everything separated so that you stay on track. Now we use a financial software, but there are days sometimes even weeks where I don’t have time to check that everything is going into the proper category.
I have toyed with the idea of going back to a cash system for our grocery budget, which I always manage to zoom through! But I know me and that envelope will end up paying the babysitter, or the valet, or buying t-shirts at the preschool because I NEVER remember to get cash.
That’s why I was excited to learn about the American Express Serve Cash Back card. This pre-paid debit card allows you to pre-load the card with cash and use it anywhere that American Express is accepted. You can even use it at over 24,000 MoneyPass® ATMs. Since it’s pre-paid there isn’t the fear of balancing out to zero and incurring fees.
I should get my card in the mail any day now and I’m going to load it up with October’s grocery budget. Once I download the app I will easily be able to check my balance and see how I am doing throughout the month. That’s almost impossible to do in our account when I have no idea what bills have been paid and checks have cleared.
I’m all about making my life easier and I really think this might help!
And I haven’t even mentioned the best part yet! You get 1% cash back on all purchases both in-store and online. And it’s almost immediate. The cash back is added to your account after your purchase and then you just log in whenever you like to redeem the amount you’ve earned which will be applied to future purchases.
You can order your own card online for free or you can purchase one from a local retailer (CVS, Walgreens etc) for up to $3.95. There is a monthly maintenance fee of $5.95, which I fully expect to make back with cash back and then some!
I also noticed that you can have multiple cards and move money between them. For instance you can create subaccounts that get their own cards. You could have one for your teenager (18 or older) or give one to the nanny for spending money. No more searching for checks or remembering to stop for cash and you control the spending and can monitor transactions.
I can’t wait to see how my budgeting experiment goes next month and share it with ya’ll! Head on over a register for a free American Express Serve Cash Back Card and let me know how you plan to use it! Do you use a cash system to stay on budget and do you think a cash back pre-paid debit card would make that easier?