Family life is confusing and messy, hectic and complicated. It can be all too easy for even the best budgeter to throw caution to the wind, and use a debit or credit card unwisely. You think you've enough in your current account to use a debit card, but it turns out you're wrong. And suddenly you're hip-deep in bank charges.

Or you've gone that little bit too far to pay the balance at the end of the month and the interest rates start to build up.

But love cards or hate them, the simple fact is you can't live without some kind of bank card. So what are your options?

When I decided a few years ago, or rather my drastically reduced income following redundancy decided for me, to go without credit or overdrafts I started to look into alternatives.

These are pre-paid cards. They look just like credit cards, and carry the same Visa or Mastercard or Maestro logo you're already familiar with. But you load the card up with cash, and you can only spend what you have on the card.

This makes it a lot easier to keep to your budget and not end up paying out half your disposable income in charges and interest each month. Read on to find out more about the advantages, and also disadvantages, of these cards.

In these recessionary times, gift giving gets a little bit more practical. You need to think about what the person you're giving the gift to really needs. And often that comes down to the ability to spend the cash themselves.

But while a monetary note in a card (anyone old enough to remember postal orders?) is always good to get, it isn't exactly fun is it? And for the person doing the giving it feels like a bit of a cop out. There are times though when good old cash is really the way to go, especially if you want to give a family member something like a back to school present. I remember from my own days starting at college and then university, money was always hugely appreciated.

So, what are the alternatives? Actually, after digging about, there's quite a few, and some good options for kids too. I was quite surprised so thought I'd share everything I'd find with you all. And please, if you've got some tips of your own, let me know in the comments at the end of the feature. I'm always grateful to get some new ideas!

Before anyone mentions it, yes I know the image above contains American money, not British notes. But I thought it was such a cute picture, I had to use it.

To find out more, read on.

How do you stop unplanned and unnecessary spending? Stop using credit cards. Sounds simple enough. Except that doing away with the plastic in this day and age isn't as easy as that.

The scramble to bid for 2012 Olympics tickets is a recent example. You could only bid online, and you could only do so using a Visa card. Of the 1.8million who applied for tickets, anecdotal evidence suggests that many may have had to use their Visa Debit cards. This means that payments will come out of their current accounts.

But, do you have any choice if you can't trust yourself with a credit card? I decided to find out.

Now, I'm not a financial advisor and I am most certainly not an expert on financial issues. I am happy to share what I've learnt in looking into this for myself, and I hope it saves other people time. But please do check details yourself before you commit to anything.

Debit cards

You can  use a debit card in situations where you would use a credit card. But, there are reasons to avoid doing so. First, it is harder to manage your account. Some retailers may take money out of your account days, or even weeks, later. Make a mistake and you've got bank charges to pay as well.

Also, unless you're using an Electron or Solo card, the retailer or bank doesn't necessarily check you actually have the funds clear in your account.

Second, a debit card is tied to your current account. And since this is the one I pay all our bills out of, there are times in the month when there's quite a lot of cash in there. I'm getting increasingly uncomfortable using our debit card to buy online. Just this month Sony had the online account details of around 100 million users stolen.

Card One Banking

Card One Banking is a unique sort of bank account run through the Natwest. You get a basic bank account, for which you're charged £12.50 a month. And there's no interest paid.

Which sounds mad but it doesn't give out overdrafts, and it doesn't have any other banking charges at all. As someone who once had the spectacular misfortune to run up nearly £300 in charges alone with Lloyds, I can say that's a major point in Card One's favour for me.

You get a bank account, into which money like your salary can be paid by BACS, or cheque, and you can set up payments too. You also get a Mastercard, onto which you can transfer money from your bank account. So you can never accidentally go into debit.

There's no credit checks needed, as the account doesn't offer you any credit. And if there's not enough money to pay the £12.50, the bank will wait until there is. You can run up to two months of missed fees, and it will then freeze your account. So the most you could end up owing is £25.

Compare that to, say, the Halifax who suddenly announced with little warning that they were going to charge DAILY for approved overdrafts - yes daily. That's £1, and if you're mostly in overdraft that's an extra £30 a month. So £12.50 isn't too much all things considered.

One issue that I came across is that it is rather complicated to have money paid into the account from overseas. However, that's not a huge problem for most people.

Pre Paid Cards

You may already know this, but it came as a big surprise to me to find out that there are such things as pre-paid 'credit' cards. Of course they're not really credit cards in the sense that you're not going into credit to the bank to use them.

Instead, you load money onto these cards, and you can only spend as much cash as you have. For this reason, they're also marketed as a great way to dispense pocket money to offspring who still need financial support such as teenagers and university students.

There's a number of these available, and you can compare all the costs and fees involved using the comparison tables at What Prepaid Card? They are mostly all Mastercard, with some Maestro and a few Visa cards such as the two offered by Virgin. These are a pay as you go card, and a pre-paid monthly card. Which one will suit will depend on how you propose to use the card.