Sometimes being a Mom can be difficult. Shopping with your children, trying to keep track of your finances, and hold it all together while you’re on the go can become overwhelming rather quickly. Whether you choose to forgo the store entirely and shop from home, or hit the mall with your little ones, there are alternative payment solutions available to help simplify your life.
Why Use Alternative Payment Solutions?
As a mom, using alternative payment solutions can help you with several different aspects of your family life. There are several reasons that the use of alternative payment solutions are on the rise, and most of them have an extreme benefit to various aspects of your financial well-being as a family. In fact, according to research, adoption of alternative payments tools – including PayPal, mobile and prepaid – has increased by 14 percent in Canada since 2016, led by a growing use of prepaid products.
Save Time
Having things like paypal, mobile payments and prepaid cards at your finger tips to pay for household expenses can help you to ensure that your payments are made on time with little effort. This will keep you on top of household expenses and ensure that your payments are up to date, saving you time. These methods are also fantastic when it comes to paying for children’s expenses like lunch orders, field trips and various other expenses associated with kids. No more forgetting to pay for your little one’s school milk order!
Helps to Budget
Staying within budget, especially when you have a family can be difficult. Research also finds that more than four in ten Canadians struggled to stay within budget in the past year and 23 percent often have a running balance on their credit card. Using alternative payment methods like prepaid cards helps to keep you on budget. Especially when you are running a balance on your credit card. Alternative payment methods, as well as apps and online tools that help you track spending and maintain a budget can have an extremely positive effect on your finances. Things like reloadable prepaid cards that have no interest charges or over draft fees can help to limit spending and keep you mindful of your budget.
Works Well for Allowance
Prepaid cards are a great way for you to give your children their allowance. This helps parents to control and monitor their spending but also allow them to use them online for their video game purchases, at the store for toys and more. This keeps your little one in control of their finances and teaches them valuable lessons about spending and budgeting. It’s no surprise that nearly half of Canadians (46 percent) with children under 18 years old would give their children a spending allowance on a prepaid card to help control and monitor their spending.
Get Paid in Real Time
With workplaces evolving and adopting new payment methods, these prepaid cards allow for you to be paid in real time which is why six in ten Canadians said they feel more loyal to a company that pays them in real time. No more cheques or waiting to cash them. In fact, 39 percent would prefer to be paid via a prepaid card, which is a quick, secure and less expensive way to issue incentives, payments and disbursements. When receiving payments through these methods, workers have access to real time payments without the fuss and wait, providing extreme flexibility. Perfect for families that need to pay bills and moms that need to make sure their children have their expenses covered.
Inclusive Way to Pay
Some people choose not to have credit cards, making ordering things online, paying for transportation like uber or lyft or covering their children’s school expenses on online servers, difficult. This is where prepaid cards come in. These cards make it easier to pay for these things without having to worry about getting into debt with a traditional credit card. These cards make financial inclusion much more realistic for moms without credit cards.
Alternative payment solutions have many benefits to families. From saving time, managing household and children’s expenses and helping to budget to allowance, getting paid in real time and providing a simple payment method to those that don’t have a credit card. These alternative payment solutions can have a huge benefit to your family.
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Elizabeth Lampman is a coffee-fuelled Mom of 2 girls and lives in Hamilton, Ontario. She enjoys travelling, developing easy recipes, crafting, taking on diy projects, travelling and saving money!
Keikilani
Wednesday 20th of March 2019
These are really great tips. I am always looking for ways to keep my budget on track.
Celebrate Woman Today
Wednesday 20th of March 2019
Knowing the options and from different sources makes it so much more powerful for any family and person.
Sarah
Wednesday 20th of March 2019
Great tips and perfect for keeping your budget in check. I'll have to read this over again with my husband.
Jennifer
Wednesday 20th of March 2019
I love using alternative sources. This is awesome information.
Tess
Wednesday 20th of March 2019
Great tips on budgeting! Im always up for budgeting.