With all of the talk surrounding the banks desire to raise ATM fees, you might think that pre-paid debit cards aren’t going to be popular for much longer. However, this is short term thinking that could derail your financial goals before they’ve gotten any progress added to them. You will need to step back and think about all of the great things that pre-paid debit cards have to offer.

Yet a lot of the population still hasn’t really understood why these cards are so great. It can be hard to really think about these cards in great detail when it always seems like someone is talking about how awful they are. One of the things that people don’t like about pre-paid debit cards is that they have fees, but what doesn’t in this financial world that we live in. Every company need sot make a profit in order to keep providing us with the products and services that we’re looking for — why should a pre-paid debit card be any different than that?

The biggest benefit to pre-paid debit cards is that no matter what type of card you get, you always know where you stand. You will know how much money that you have to work with — you can even get email and text alerts of your balance if that’s what you want. Many of the major pre-paid debit cards can be refilled offline as well as online. It’s a matter of convenience, really. Knowing where you stand means that you never have to worry about being overdrawn on your account. Yes, that also mean that if you try to get more stuff than what is in your account, your card will be declined. Now, that can be embarrassing, but it’s wroth it when you think about the benefits. You aren’t going to have to deal with over the limit fees, like you would with a credit card, and you won’t have to deal with checking account overdraft fees either.

There’s something powerful about having a pre-paid debit card in your wallet because you can try out new things. For example, if you’re an online shopper there are often concerns that you never really know what will happen when you make a purchase. There are a lot of sellers online that are using credit card information that they were given to enroll people in auto-ship programs. These programs rebill the card that you give the retailer every month or at any other frequency that you can think of. This might be every two weeks, every month, or every three months. Either way, it all boils down to one thing: a store taking money out where you may or may not want that. It’s better to go with a pre-paid debit card for online purchases because they can’t do that. They can’t take money that isn’t there and create over the limit fees or even overdraft fees. The card will be declined, and you might even get an email from the seller. However, it’s better than ending up with extra fees.

The fees with a pre-paid debit card are a lot cheaper than the fees associated with checking accounts. In addition, if you’ve had some problems with banks in the past, you’ll find that it’s easier to get a pre-paid debit card than it would be to get a checking account.

If you’re ready to pick up a pre-paid debit card for yourself, there are a few ways to go about it. You can go offline to the supermarket or the big box retailers and get a pre-paid debit card, or you can get a card that’s going to be from an online company. There are benefits to the offline companies, but the truth is that the online companies can offer you better features because their overhead is a lot lower. It just depends on what you’re trying to achieve. If you already get direct deposit at work, your new pre-paid debit card could even be free — what more could you want than that?