by Hope
As I have been tracking the money I spend for my personal goal of changing my relationship with money, I decided to begin using cash only for as much as possible. It just hurts more, and really limits what I can spend. I know this is age old money advice, but as you well know…I have to learn things the hard way.
The exceptions are gas and regular monthly bills (paid from my checking account.) My question is how, do you keep your account information safe? I’ve had my checking account cleared out more than a couple of times. And have no idea what my security failure was.
Securing Your Banking Information
My debit card is never outside of my possession. I don’t use it online. What can I do? What tips and tricks do you have to keep your liquid cash safe when you move to a cash based money plan?
With the money tracking I am doing, I withdrawal $100 at a time. I am using a Google sheet on my phone to track every penny in and out and setting categories as I have time. It’s definitely a process to get in the habit. But even just tracking has opened my eyes a bit.
My Next Plan
I will get into this more when I have steady income again, but this experience has opened my eyes to how important it really is to get my single credit card down to a $0 balance. While I have steady income, it’s worked to pay it off and kind of use it as a revolving line of credit. When I don’t, this does not work so well. So my next plan…pay off the credit card in full and keep it that way! But first a job…
Hope is a creative, solutions-focused business manager helping clients grow their business and work more efficiently by leveraging expertise in project management, digital marketing, & tech solutions. She’s recently become an empty nester as her 5 foster/adoptive kids have spread their wings. She lives with her 5 dogs in a small town in NE Georgia and prefers the mountains to the beaches any day. She struggles with the travel bug and is doing her best to help each of her kids as their finish schooling and become independent (but it’s hard!) She has run her own consulting company for almost twenty years! Hope began sharing her journey with the BAD community in the Spring of 2015 and feels like she has finally in a place to really focus on making wise financial decisions.
How is your account getting cleared out? Do you mean by fraudulent activity?
If so, when was the last time you changed your password and PIN? Do you give them to the kids? Are they random or things that are easily guessed? When was the last time you got your card number changed?
Apart from that, never let your card out of your sight, eg when paying do not let shop assistants take it and use it under the counter or in a back room etc.
To protect my money, I keep only a little in my checking and move my paycheck into a savings account. When I need to pay a bill, I transfer only what I need for that back into the checking. I use a saving account at the same institution so that the transfers are immediate, instead of a separate online bank which could take days. It is important that the savings account you use for this purpose is NOT linked to the checking account for overdraft protection, otherwise it could get drained too. I feel at least then, if my checking account is compromised, they won’t get everything.
For online banking and paying of bills, I enter the bill information into MY bank’s online bill pay feature. They send the money to the utility, creditor, etc. The bank holds all the data, I do not put my bank information into other websites to pay their bill through their site. Everything goes through my bank.
I know several people who have lost money out of their bank accounts because of having used their debit cards at gas pump. There had been an external reader added on, and someone got their information that way. So, for this one thing, I do use a credit card and pay it off each month.