If you remember, I wrote about the new Bluebird prepaid debit card, available at Walmart, back in October. So, I’ve been using the Bluebird card by American Express for the last month or so now, and I have to say that it’s very easy to use! It works very much like my debit and credit cards. I have access from my computer, as well as my Android phone to look and see what our spending is like. I was able to catch ourselves when we started jumping into some of those “impulse buys”, and kind of keep on track a little bit better. I knew there was a finite, and small amount on this card, so we really had to budget!

Bluebird by American Express is more than just a “glorified gift card”, and it has a lot of really great potential. You can use it at checkout, you can use it to pay your bills, to get gas, and even to get cash out of an ATM machine. The benefits they offer are great, and definitely are comparable to a bank account. Depositing money is even really easy! You deposit all or part of your paycheck with Direct Deposit, deposit checks via the Bluebird Mobile App, transfer money from your checking or savings accounts, or just add cash at any Walmart Register.

Bluebird also has no annual fees, no monthly fees, no overdraft fees, no minimum balance fees, no card replacement fees, and no foreign exchange fees.

Although it’s a great alternative for people who choose not to have a bank, and a great way to allocate money to family members’ sub accounts, i.e. kids in college, etc, it’s probably not something that we are personally going to continue using past this review period. We have a credit union, and we actually utilize reward points with them. It was a little hard for me to give up some of those reward points for the purpose of this review, but I was really curious how well this card would work.

Getting a Bluebird card is easy. All you have to do is sign up at http://bluebird.com

To learn more about why Bluebird might be the right choice for you, go to https://bluebird.com/#why-bluebird