If you are visiting from the Money Hacks Carnival hosted at Four Pillars, welcome to Out of Debt Again! Thank you Mike for including my post in today’s carnival!

Happy Labor Day!

I’m off today, but working just the same. I’ve already reconciled one credit card account for July and August, and our main checking account for August.

I thought I ought to let y’all know we’re going to try the cash method again.

Here’s how it came about… a couple of weekends ago I impulsively signed up for one of those sites that allows you to do background checks on people. My mom learned some curious details on some people we knew years ago, and my curiosity got the best of me when she told me one person had committed suicide over having gotten in some kind of “trouble”. So I paid $4.95 to use the site for four days.  I used the site and tried to cancel, but there didn’t seem to be a way aside from emailing them and requesting that they cancel.  Four days later early in the morning they charged my credit card $29.95 and were planning to do that every month.

I emailed, requesting that they cancel my subscription and refund my money.  When I received an automated email thanking me FOR my subscription, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I had had the foresight when paying the $4.95 to use a credit card, just in case anything like this ended up happening. I called the credit card company and explained my situation. The representative agreed to remove the $29.95, and then we talked about what to do if they charged me next month. She suggested that I get new cards so that they wouldn’t have the number. So I agreed to do that.

After I got off the phone I told Mr. A what I’d done, and we talked about what to do in the meantime.  During the course of conversation we discussed the rest of our budget.  When we got to groceries, we decided to try the cash system for the month, and Mr. A also agreed to trying to limit our grocery purchases to $160 for each week.

A few days ago, Mr. A told me how using cash had helped to save us money at the grocery store. He was buying an item that was on sale, with a limit of six. He hadn’t realized there was a limit, so when the total sale was much higher than he’d anticipated, he realized there was a problem. He confessed to me that had he been using plastic, he probably wouldn’t have noticed that he was charged regular price for the seventh and eighth item.

This is encouraging, while at the same time frustrating, as Mr. A and I did the grocery shopping together for years and he knows you have to check your grocery receipts so you aren’t overcharged!

Maybe he doesn’t have that short term memory knack that I always seemed to have at remembering exactly how much I paid for an item so when I checked out I knew 99% of the time if it was right or not.

When I was younger, I actually used a calculator while doing my shopping, to make sure I didn’t go over my budgeted amount. I was such a conscientious, responsible young person!

I’ll let you know how using the cash system goes this time around, and if we can stick to $640 for groceries for the month.

If you would like to see how we did on Week 1 of the Cash Method, click here to read all about it.

Yours Truly,