Will the Coin Cause More Spending?

My mind has been absolutely blown by Coin, the electronic credit card that allows you to load all of your cards onto it, and then select which one you want to charge it to by pressing a button. Am I not making sense? Watch this video:

I imagine some day I will tell my children I used to have to lug all 4 of my credit and debit cards around with me when I was growing up. They will think it is ridiculous, similarly to how I think it is ridiculous people used to ride the subway using coins.

My only concern with this Coin product is that I will spend more money.  I recently tried a little money saving experiment due to my full time graduate student budget. When I decided to become a full time student in September, I thought for sure my monthly credit card spending would go down. After all, I would have time to buy affordable groceries at Trader Joe's, I would not be paying to go out to lunch most days like I did at work, having class every night would prevent me from going out for dinner and drinks with friends, and having class Friday night and Saturday morning would really slow down my social life. What on earth would I have to spend money on?

Well, I have no idea, but the first two months my credit card bill was similar to when I was working and had a paycheck. Then, one of my professors brought up that he only pays in cash because it is proven that you spend less if you do so. I had read about this in a few sources, and figured I would put it to the test.

And it's entirely accurate. I was much more cautious with my money, deprived myself of a lot more unnecessary luxuries, and the amounts leaving my checking account each month for cash deposits and to pay credit card bills were a lot less.

I'm sold on using cash for almost everything, despite all points and rewards of my credit card. My hypothesis is that Coin will be successful because it is convenient and because it will encourage more spending. Not to mention it is easier and quicker to use than any sort of mobile wallet or payment application.

Possibly the best feature, in my opinion, is that if you get too far from your Coin, you will be alerted on your phone. Coin uses a low powered blue tooth signal so it knows when your phone is far away from you. So, there is no reason to worry you will lose all of your credit cards at once.  I'm not going to lie, I'm dying to try it out.

And, perhaps it will save me money because I will have less of a desire to buy new, fun wallets all the time as I won't have as much to carry!