In my Your Money column Monday, I write about Suze Orman’s Approved card, a prepaid debit card that is essentially a checking account without the checks (or any bank branches).

While much of the column is about her business model – and her efforts to change the way credit reporting companies evaluate people who use debit cards – I don’t want to give short shrift to the question of whether this sort of product is truly useful.

I see at least three potential strategies for consumers here:

1) Use the Approved card or other prepaid debit cards to replace a bank account, whether it’s because you don’t qualify for a checking account because you’ve bounced too many checks or overdrawn too many times, or because you choose to steer clear of big banks.

2) Use a card as an isolated budgeting tool – say for a hobby or a vacation, where you don’t want to exceed a certain spending level. The card won’t let you spend more than you have. Then again, the monthly fees that most cards charge will cut into that budget.

3) Hand a card over to a teenager or college student as the first step on the road to a true checking account or credit card. Sort of like training wheels.

Have any of you used prepaid debit cards as your primary spending or budgeting tool? Or would you use Ms. Orman’s Approved card?

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=021a114718d787da20274deb9145e281