by Joseph Kenny | 08/21/09

Credit cards are wonderful tools. They allow you to pay for items and you don't have to carry cash around everywhere. They are safe, convenient, and could easily be your downfall.

The ability to spend more than you have on you, or more than you have in general, leads many people into overspending, and it's a short trip from overspending to substantial debt. Credit cards become a part of the pattern. If you want to break the cycle then saying goodbye to credit cards, completely or just until you get your finances under control, then these are the ways to do it.

Plan Your Monthly Expenses

You need to plan your budget on a monthly budget. Calling them your monthly expenses helps many people to see beyond the term budget. For many, the word budget implies that you create a budget once and then you live by it month after month.

What you want to do is plan for your monthly expenses with the understanding that they will change from one month to the next. This keeps you keenly aware of your financial situation and allows you to make further cutbacks as necessary.

It may sound like extra work to plan out a new budget for each new month, but it was your previous lack of awareness that lead to your current financial situation. This step helps you to focus on exactly how your financial picture is changing and what you need to do to keep it changing for the better.

Pay Your Bills Online

Paying your bills online has several benefits. It saves you from the monthly hassle of writing a bunch of checks and mailing them. Less time paying bills is always good.

You can also take advantage of automatic payment features. This will deduct the correct amount from your account each month and help you to avoid late payments that can affect your credit and bury you in late fees. Don't worry about having enough. You already planned for each bill when you wrote out your monthly expenses.

Reacquaint Yourself With Cash

For those small shopping trips start spending cash. This is an easy way to make sure that you don't overspend. If you don't have the option to overspend then you won't because you can't. There is no way to spend more cash than you have on you if that is all you brought to the store.

Bringing only cash with you and only as much cash as you need is an old trick to avoid temptation altogether. If you don't want to carry cash and use it for everything then you can enlist the aid of your debit card. Still, cash is an easy way to limit yourself and to force yourself to stop and think every time you spend money.

Saying goodbye to credit cards is a step in the right direction for many people. Until you get out of debt and learn to use credit cards responsibly, it is better to just avoid them completely. You may find that you function quite well without them and decide to use them only for the occasional purchase or not at all.