I have paper cash money at home… does it make sense to get some money stored up in prepaid debit in advance of the possible Federal debt default and unknown financial repercussions?
What are you trying to accomplish?
An alternate payment scheme… but if it has the same point of failure as a credit card, then it makes no sense. I’m just wondering if bank-issued credit cards lock up in a financial emergency, do pre-paid cards still work… because they’re not using a line of credit? Just wondering.
Seems like it can’t hurt to have some money in it, then if it confers no advantage, just spend it later.
I don’t know why credit/debit cards would stop working should the powers that be not be able to pull their heads out of their butts. It seems the biggest immediate problems for individuals will be for those that rely on checks from the government as those this will stop. I don’t think either side of the idiot aisle will want to be responsible for any of this should it happen, but the finger pointing will be astounding and record breaking.
If the banks have a crisis, and they can’t extent lines of credit any longer, then my concern is CCs might lock up. Supposedly during the GFC we were hours away from exactly that kind of event. With a prepaid card, it’s not credit, it’s supposedly your money in the account.
Now my theory gets blown up if there is a crisis and my deposit just got thrown into a bucket where I don’t really have rights, and I lose the money on the card.
I’m going to push a few $ into the Green Dot card and throw it into my safe with my paper currency. If I don’t like it, I’ll spend it, cut it up, and close the account.
I’d be much more worried about Green Dot shutting down. If your CC shuts down, you have their money. If Green Dot shuts down, they have your money. Honestly, if you have more than one credit card from different issuers, and they all go belly-up for whatever reason, the Green Dot is not likely to be useful either. I’d probably store some silver coins in addition to cash if I were worried about that.
A workable emergency money/exchange strategy should probably look like this: Normal → US $ → silver and/or gold coins → food storage
I wouldn’t depend on any plastic except in normal times.