4 ms·

> I can't think of a reason why you'd want to for your own purposes. It's quite simple. For argument's sake let's say I am an individual with limited willpower

> I can't think of a reason why you'd want to for your own purposes. It's quite simple. For argument's sake let's say I am an individual with limited willpower. Say I budget $200 per month on restaurants, and I need to stick to this to meet some other financial goal. How, as someone with limited willpower, do I enforce this? Option 1 is to keep track of and categorize all bank transactions, either manually or via a third party budgeting app, and check my "restaurant" balance each time before I order food. This is unlikely to happen because I am lazy and assume I have the money. Option 2 is to keep a physical envelope of cash that I put $200 in. When the money runs out, I don't have any to buy restaurant food. This works, but is very inconvenient. How can I use Doordash, Venmo a friend, etc with this? Option 3 is to have a debit card that only has restaurant money on it. Now the card simply doesn't work anymore when I'm out of money. It's effectively the same as the envelope, but now I can use it online as well.

sofixa 4y ago
What you're describing sounds like what most people refer to as virtual cards. Three of my banks provide that for free, even though only two allow setting up a per-card limit.
NavinF 4y ago
If you have at least 2 credit cards from the same bank (eg one card with $20k limit and 5% cashback on restaurants and another card with $10k limit and 2% cashback on all purchases), you can call the bank and tell them to move $19,800 of the credit limit from one card to the other. That way you can't spend over $200 without using the wrong card. Virtual debit cards are another ubiquitous solution, but they cost a lot more despite being free. Your option 3 subsidizes smarter consumers when you pay full price (which has interchange fees built-in) on everything without getting any fees returned to you in the form of cashback. (One issue with my solution is that a lot of banks let you spend 2x your credit limit on visa signature and similar tier cards. In that case you'll have to reduce the limit to $100)
mousetree 4y ago
Try privacy.com. Seems to be built for exactly this use case (disclosure: have not used it). (On a related note, to GP comment, Lithic was actually spun out of Privacy.com)

sofixa 4y ago

What you're describing sounds like what most people refer to as virtual cards. Three of my banks provide that for free, even though only two allow setting up a per-card limit.

NavinF 4y ago

If you have at least 2 credit cards from the same bank (eg one card with $20k limit and 5% cashback on restaurants and another card with $10k limit and 2% cashback on all purchases), you can call the bank and tell them to move $19,800 of the credit limit from one card to the other. That way you can't spend over $200 without using the wrong card. Virtual debit cards are another ubiquitous solution, but they cost a lot more despite being free. Your option 3 subsidizes smarter consumers when you pay full price (which has interchange fees built-in) on everything without getting any fees returned to you in the form of cashback. (One issue with my solution is that a lot of banks let you spend 2x your credit limit on visa signature and similar tier cards. In that case you'll have to reduce the limit to $100)

mousetree 4y ago

Try privacy.com. Seems to be built for exactly this use case (disclosure: have not used it). (On a related note, to GP comment, Lithic was actually spun out of Privacy.com)