Overspending? MasterCard’s InControl Forces You To Stop Breaking Your Budget Financial Consultant

Overspending? MasterCard’s InControl Forces You To Stop Breaking Your Budget

It’s THE sale at your favorite store… and I mean the Big one. Even though you’re supposed to be saving up, you can’t help but get three shirts and two pants and casual shoes plus going-out shoes and a snazzy hat. As you walk out of the store happily with five bags, you get a mysterious text: You Are Over Your Shopping Budget By $120. With less of a pep in your step, you go back to return your purchases. Was it a message from your personal finance angel? Actually, this could be the future of credit cards with MasterCard’s inControl program.

InControl is designed to help customers better manage their credit use with spending controls and real-time alerts. Unlike money management sites like Mint or Visa’s alert system, inControl goes a step further to literally cut off your spending for your own good. The New York Times calls it “a sort of financial chastity belt that offers the potential to prevent a variety of budget sins and other money traps.”

The program puts consumers in control of their spending by letting them:

The need for a credit card program like inControl shows just how out of control consumers can be. Bloomberg calls ours a “new abnormal economy with schizophrenic consumers”, where people suffer a foreclosure or bankruptcy yet line up to buy the newest Apple toy. InControl makes the concept of budgeting a tangible part of a consumer’s routine with real consequences, beyond just numbers on a budgeting spreadsheet. If we can’t slap ourselves on the wrist for overspending, our credit cards will have to the responsible thing for us.

Citi will be the first to offer Mastercard’s InControl in late 2010. The service will begin with spending alerts and later include cut-off spending limits. So instead of enabling your spending habit, imagine credit cards as the little angel on your shoulder to remind you to turn around, march back to the store, and return that impulsive purchase. For wayward teenagers, employers, compulsive restaurant-goers, shopaholics, and all consumers alike, it’s the next level up to protect our money from ourselves.

Bottomline: Citi will soon offer Mastercard’s InControl program, which helps consumers budget better with self-set spending limits and real-time alerts to prevent overspending on their credit card.

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