A year ago, I decided to block my credit cards and only use my neon Mastercard debit card going forward.
Budget tracking effort / cashback gain ratio
My reasoning was the following: it takes me more effort in budget tracking via YNAB, than it brings me in cashback (200-300 Swiss francs per year).
To be precise, by budget tracking effort, I mean:
- Open another two apps to download the CSV files, change them into the YNAB format, and import them into YNAB
- And this needed to be done once a week, or at least once a month
On reading it like that, a part of my brain tells me that I’m exaggerating, that it takes very little time… but the other part of my brain (yeah, I know, it works pretty well! ^^) which is minimalist knows to what extent it isn’t just about time, but also the additional mental load that it generates.
I had written my previous article 1.5 months after having started using this system, and I was already seeing the benefits.
And so, one year later, I can tell you that we’re keeping this system. It’s so practical only having to export my neon transactions, and import them into YNAB.
And that’s it!
The only exception to my use of credit cards
As I already said it a year ago, I won’t repeat myself… and so I’ve only used my credit card once or twice this year for large expenses (> CHF 1'000).
And to avoid having to keep track of the card, I repaid the transaction amount straight away by a payment from my neon bank account.
Conclusion
The only thing that would make me go back is if the credit card institutions started to use the Swiss NextGen API, so that all the transactions are automatically imported into YNAB, in real time. However, it’s already been several years and things only seem to be moving extremely slowly…
Also, my minimalist side really likes only having a limited number of accounts in YNAB, so I’m not 100% sure that I would go back… We’ll see!
And what about you, are you more about maximizing cashback or financial minimalism?
PS: in my article from a year ago, I explain how to import your bank transactions into a CSV format in YNAB, as well as how to block your Swisscard and/or Certo One credit cards via the mobile app
