You’ve probably heard the adage “pay yourself first”. Well, now there is a website that will help you essentially tax yourself first. Recently mentioned in Businessweek magazine, SavedPlus.com tracks your spending and automatically transfers a set percentage of whatever you spend into your savings account.
Let’s say you choose a 10% preset savings and spend $75. SavedPlus will then transfer $7.50 from your checking account into your savings account. (In practice, the transfers are only done once a week.) This is an interesting way to force yourself to save, and perhaps knowing you’ll have to set aside extra will keep you from spending so much in the first place. You will have to provide your financial passwords for them to track everything. They claim the usual security precautions, using Yodlee for account aggregation. iOS and Android apps are also available.
After playing with it for a couple of days… so far I felt the interface to be a bit clunky and it took me a few tries to get my accounts linked up properly. It’s just not as polished as say Mint.com. A handy feature allows you to link credit card(s) to track spending; you don’t have to buy everything with your checking account debit card.
Expired $100 bonus offer. Their new Christmas promotion offers to match up to $100 your SavedPlus savings as of December 15th, 2013. You have to follow the directions carefully to set it up and it is limited to the first 100 new users, but otherwise it appears to be a pretty easy 100 bucks and they provide enrollment confirmation so you know you’re in. There is no need to change your spending habits at all. The promo worked, it got my attention!
Am I missing something or do they really expect you to enter your bank’s username/password. I don’t see any way to setup ACH info like you would expect for this type of service.
@Mike – Yes they really expect that. Otherwise they can’t see how much you’re spending.
Thanks Jonathan! Glad to report that it worked for me.
This offer appears to be dead.
Subject: End of promotion announcement
From: SavedPlus Team
2:01 PM (3 hours ago)
Dear user,
Sorry, but this promo event is over.
If you have any further questions, feel free to email us at support@savedplus.com
Yours,
SavedPlus Team
You would need to alter your spending habits…or your savings habits if you have them. If you operate on a 0-based budget (like I do) then something would have to be altered. Either spending less or saving less to offset the forced savings.
Just got from them:
“Unfortunately we reached the limit of the applications earlier today. So you could have received the automatic reply that campaign is over.
Please stay tuned. We have more to come early next year!
Sincerely,
SavedPlus Team”
Really ?! That’s after I REPEATEDLY inputted all the sensitive info on their buggy website. Such a waste of time ! And they STILL advertise this promo on their home page ! They have ZERO respect for their customers ! Not happy.
Serge – we are sorry for your experience. Our limited promotion was available to the first 100 users and we reached this number very quickly.
We will use your feedback to make improvements in our future promotions and will update the web site shortly.
SavedPlus team
Sorry to those who had trouble with this promo. Just wanted to note that I did get my $100 deposit a few days ago.