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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]For those who charge monthly expenses and pay off every month, how do you ensure that you have enough to pay it off every month?
 Do you not carry your debit card and pay cash only?

Do you pay the bill all at once, or do you make several payments to your credit during the month?

I worry that psychologically, I would see the high checking balance, and think that we have more to spend than we do. [/quote]

You check your on-line credit card account instead of your checking balance.  The credit card accounts give you far more detailed analysis of what you are spending on.  I personally find that using debit cards and cash make me spend more (I know that for most people it is the other way around).  When I pay by cash, I spend what it is my pocket and I don't pay attention to what I'm spending as much.  When I do everything by CC, I find that I check the account on-line at least once/week to see what our overall spending is.  I also use the on-line tools that help me break down how much I've spent at restaurants, how much at grocery stores, how much for gas, etc, so that I can tell if, for example, we've been driving a lot more than usual and the gas expenses are higher than usual.  Or if I've spent $200 on restaurants, so I'm going to make sure that I bring my lunch this week (I give myself a limit to how much we spend in restaurants each month).  I find the on-line tools help me track monthly usage much better instead of "Hmmm...I've spent $100 in cash, I wonder what I spent it on?"

FYI, I use Discover which breaks down the spending into some very useful categories.  I get 1% back on all purchases, with certain categories paying 5% in given quarters (this quarter is gas stations, theme parks and movies up to $1500 spending or $75 cash back).  So far, since November (my anniversary date), I have earned about $450 cash back.

For example, in the last month we've spent about $3300 in the following breakdown:
$200 automotive + gas
$800 medical
$800  merchandise ($350 on new convertible car seats!)
$600 restaurants (unusually high with 6 days eating out due to the derecho, our anniversary and one other event)
$800 groceries
$100 miscellaneous (including some utilities)

I can tell that our usual monthly budget on restaurants is about $300, but the derecho had us eat out a lot when we were out of power for 6 days.  Although we camped out in our underground basement at night, during the days we went out for long lunches and sometimes dinners, so we ate out a lot more than usual.  Likewise, groceries was a little high because we had to replace a lot of food (I threw out food for two fridges and two freezers) after the derecho.

If I spent cash or debit, I'd need to do a lot more work with receipts and notes to keep track of all of this.  It would be significantly more work.  Before the spending analyzer, I didn't keep as close watch on what we spent on, but then that was pre-kids and we had a LOT more disposable income as DINKS.[/quote]

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