Citibank's rounding up program to save you money

[Fern]

Have you heard about that new credit card program, I think it was a Citibank commercial, where on every purchase you make with your credit card, they round the amount up to the nearest dollar and deposit that amount into your checking/savings account.

It's supposed to be a painless way to save. I thought it was interesting.

[poundwise]

Are you referring to the Bank of America "Keep the change" program?

If so, I think it is quite lame. Basically if you spend money with their debit card, they'll round the figure up to the next whole dollar and deposit the change in a savings account. In other words, they will take your money from your checking account and put it into a savings account for you a little at a time.

For one, who needs this? What kind of savings does one to expect this to amount to? And what kind of person needs the bank to do this for them? Answer: The kind who isn't going to manage their own money anyway and therefore this will do them little good.

For another, a good way to save is to quit using your debit card so much. This encourages people to spend more and more often. Of course, that is the point. They make money from the merchant every time you swipe the card and so they want people to do so as often as possible.

And lastly, the savings account associated with this pays virtually nil interest.

Yes, it is intriguing to get the 100% match during that part of the promo but this is limited and, overall, I find the whole thing to be largely an exercise in wasted time and effort. If someone is not savings and is looking to change that then this is, at best, an artificial "solution" to the problem.

If someone just uses their debit card a lot and thinks its "neat," then I guess thats a different story.

It is clever marketing.

If Citibank has something similar and you were not referring to the BOA deal, I expect it works in much the same fashion and therefore would receive the same review from me.

[Fern]

No, I think it probably is the program you've referred to. I agree, it's pennies on the dollar, so to speak, but there are many people out there who seem to have an awful lot of trouble saving anything, so this program's for them!

[humandraydel]

I pretty much agree with poundwise. I briefly considered joining it for the "match" because I already have a BofA debit card - but in the end I didn't.

[jamai]

considering that most items leave a cent, e.g. $0.99, $9.99. i think its pointless, i mean you could spend $100 but because the actual price is $99.99 they'd only transfer $0.01 to your savings account. whats the point?

[Fern]

When i heard about it, it reminded me of the people here on this forum cus it sounded like the kind of they they would already be doing.

[Hypersion]

where on every purchase you make with your credit card, they round the amount up to the nearest dollar and deposit that amount into your checking/savings account.

So they deposit $X in your saving account at 1% and they leave a debit on your credit card at 20%.