Jeremey over at GenXFinance reviewed the new Discover Prepaid Debit Card. The card is focused on teaching teenagers about controlled spending and maintaining balance limits, which is great. But what about those Gen X and Gen Y’ers who don’t trust themselves with their plastic? A good way to impose restraints on unruly spending? We think so.

We’ve been getting lots of inquiries about BillShrink, the free online website that analyzes credit cards and phone bills to find the best deal for your specific needs. So after giving a couple of thorough overviews of the services, we decided to go straight to the source and get some information about the site firsthand about what spurred these guys on, what to expect from the service, and most importantly, where they plan to expand to in the future. Keep on reading for our Q&A with Bill Shrink CEO, Peter Pham.

With all of the bank mergers and acquisitions taking place right now, many people are getting loads of updates from their banking and credit card companies about transitioning to other companies and new policies and procedures. What many of you may not be aware of, however, is that credit card and bank account scams are at an all time high.

I’m not one to toot my own horn, but I will today because, frankly, I deserve it. Today I became a card-carrying member of the Debt-Free club. This beautiful day follows an intense two years of handing over half of my salary towards debt repay, and I am tickled pink to have finally gotten to the point where I don’t have to throw away my paycheck on crap that I purchased eight years ago.

In a new monthly feature we’re going to call “Personal Story”, we’re going to publish our own and reader’s personal finance stories. We’ll focus on how we got into debt, how we’ve worked (or working) our way out of it, and how we keep ourselves on track financially. The hope is that we can all get ideas and encouragement from each other to find ways to live within our means, stick to budgets, and save for a rainy day. It’s hard to stick by these plans by yourself, so we want to try to build a community that encourages these principles. I’m going to kick things off by talking about my own debt story.

You may remember our previous post on BillShrink, the immensely helpful website that recommends cheaper cell phone plans. It’s been updated to analyzes your 3G iPhone Plan to find the best rates and scouts out credit cards that are most beneficial to your spending habits. And although we recommend choosing the iPod Touch over the iPhone, we think their credit card analyzer is a pretty great tool.

Credit cards can be bad. Like most people, I learned that the hard way. A few years ago, after destroying my credit and sinking as low as was financially possible for me, I decided to turn it all around. No more spending sprees, or paying exorbitant amounts for a tiny bedroom downtown or ordering takeout every night. I cut up my credit cards and lived happily on a cash only basis for the few years it took me to work my finances out.

Renting an apartment, especially in New York, can be an enormous headache. Lots of people fall into the trap of getting a job and seriously overestimating what they can afford to spend on rent each month. When I first moved to New York, I lived in a pretty spacious (at least by New York standards) one bedroom in Washington Heights. The rent was $850. My salary was 26K. How did I do it? By using almost all of my paycheck to pay my rent, and paying utilities, food and other random bills with credit cards. A big no-no.