Bank of America's Keep the Change is a poor savings account
We all know it pays to read the fine print when opening new accounts and doing business transactions, but many times I don't think we realize that not reading the fine print can cost us, even if the new account has to do with saving money. I read about a great example today on the Online Savings Blog where the author digs into Bank of America's Keep the Change saving program to find out that it is riddled with fees and pays only a paltry .2% APY on the account.
Sure Bank of America provides a match up to $250 which could help out some customers, but after you take into account the fees and the low interest rate, using a high yield savings account becomes a much better answer. Other than the Bank of America match associated with this account, the real draw for a user is the ease of saving associated with rounding up every purchase.
If you still want to use the roundup method you can use Wesabe to track your spending and transfer in your rounded-up amounts at the end of each week, just like one of the commentators over at the Online Savings Blog. Personally, I'd rather automatically transfer a specific amount to an online saving account after each paycheck than base my savings on how many times I spend money. If I saved based on a roundup of every transaction I'm too worried that I would use the savings to justify purchases I don't need to be making!
Personally, I am sick of the excessive use of the asterisk by companies nowadays. I don't think I have seen a commercial or received a mailing for any kind of service lately that doesn't come with more asterisks than Barry Bond's sports record, which is disheartening. I realize that disclosing all of the information about a service is difficult to do in an advertisement, but companies need to quit relying on hard to find fine print to advertise too-good- to-be-true offers. Important information like fees and interest rates should be disclosed at the top of agreements in an easy-to-read table format so that consumers can see them front and center, without having to go looking for them with a magnifying glass!
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-08-2008 @ 11:53PM
Mh1 said...
Every dollar extra you spend for this the merchant pays 2%-3% to Bank of america in fees. They make more from the merchants than they pay you back. Wow, arent they nice guys!! NOT
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9-09-2008 @ 7:07AM
Jesse C Anderson said...
Well when I this in sunday paper it make think, now that the wolf have been found we just get to run, is there any one out there who want to help the people's who make below the 50,000$ mark?
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9-09-2008 @ 11:10AM
MaggieD said...
ANYTHING Bank of America does, they do for themselves. Believe me, they are not in the business of helping out the customer. All they care about is $. We banked with them for 25 years--everything, auto loans, mortgage, checking accounts, charge cards,etc. You WOULD think that having a long-standing relationship with a bank like this, they would have a little loyality towards YOU, their customer? When we had some financial problems suddenly, we came to them and told them the truth. We were only asking for a little more time on some loans and a credit card. We had never paid anything late or short. How did BOA respond? They prompty raised the intrest on our credit card to 30% + a larger portion of the balance. In other words, they made it harder on us, not easier. They flagged our credit (or whatever they do) so that our credit rating dropped--even though we hadn't been late or missed a payment on anything!) The results of this was any company affiliated with BOA in anyway also raised thier rates on us. ALL BEFORE WE HAD DONE ONE THING WRONG! And is that legal? Unfortunatley, YES. It is an unregulated industry that amounts to legalized loan-sharking. In this election year people talk about gas prices and pro-choice. What reform we should discuss is getting credit card companies under control so they don't ruin lives. Yeah, I know lots of people who say that "they got themselves into debt", but BOA and others spend millions of dollars in advertising to entice us to charge, charge, charge! They absolutley are sending the message to everyone that YOU are the only one not living "the good life". They make people feel they are missing out of all the fun of life if they don't have this or that. They seduce people who should be living within their means. The nasty little tricks that credit card companies pull on us, largely unknown to most of us shoudl be made public--like the warning labels on drugs or bigger. It should read something like: Warning: Use of this 'fantastic plastic' will result in you repaying 10 times the amount of the value of what you purchased. And we will tack on fees for paying by phone, for your going over your credit limit by as much as one cent and being late by an hour. BIG fees. And then we will raise your intrest rates automatically. And we actually calculate intrest on your account 2 times a month, not 1 time, so you are acutally paying intrest twice a month on your balance. If you have a spare day or two, get a magnifying glass and a dictonary and look at the fine print. If you don't understand it...call them. You'll get some smart-ass who tries to make you feel like a moron. When we got out of debt, I got rid of my credit cards, save one for emergencies, and I save $ for what I want to buy. I may have to wait, but I find I appreciate it all the more because it did not come to me with a flash of plastic. Mark my words well, especially if your just starting out in life. Don't get caught in the trap. Because your best friend Bank Of America is a snake in the grass!
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9-09-2008 @ 11:10AM
NDW said...
I think this is a great savings account. It matches 100% for the first 3 months and 5% after that PLUS a 0.2% APR. The APR is poor, but for those who will not take a chunk out to put into saving monthly, this is great. As far as I can tell from the website, fees can be avoided if you keep the money in the savings account or have direct deposit. A 5% match is much better than a 3 or 4% APR on high interest savings accounts.
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9-09-2008 @ 11:11AM
Josh Smith said...
Thanks for sharing, If it is not saving or saving like this I'll vote for saving like this.
9-24-2008 @ 12:41PM
Steven said...
Keep the Change is just that, keeping change. It's not savings! You are always better off saving the money you are spending in a high interest bearing account.
NDW: The 5% match is only on the monthly transfer you make with Keep the Change. It doesn't apply to your principal. That 5% is classic misdirection, an old parlor trick. It's designed to distract you from that pitiful APR, which in no way compares to the 4 or 5% high yield interest savings account. Four percent is 20 times greater than .2%! You are not going to make up a 20 time difference with incremental matches on small deposits in your account (deposits that only accrue AFTER you spend). You will easily accrue more PER MONTH on your principal in a 4% APR account than you do in an ENTIRE YEAR on your Keep the Change.
Finally, bear in mind the irony of the Keep the Change account. In order to save more money you must spend more. It actually encourages people to spend more because it creates the false notion that you're saving more the more that you spend! This, of course, is ridiculous, and should be avoided at all costs. If you simply put that money in a high interest account every month, instead of spending it, you would be much better off.
Everybody's situation is different, so maybe this suits some people's habits. There is not room to get into the compound interest calculations here, but I urge you to do the math for yourself and see that Keep the Change is, at best, intentionally deceptive.
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9-28-2008 @ 3:59PM
KeepTheChangeUser said...
I have keep the change and in no way consider it a primary method of saving money. I was already using my checkcard for many purchases and decided that the "rounding up" of the change associated with those purchases was an additional vehicle to deposit a few extra pennies. I never factor in those transfers when making a decision to purchase something so there is no way that it would encourage additional spending. It is surely not the best method of saving money but it beats doing nothing.
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10-18-2008 @ 8:43AM
Stephanie said...
I have Keep the Change on my savings account and I love it. It makes my life easier because I am able to keep a better track of what I was already spending and they don't charge me any fees on my account. My savings is free as long as I make one purchase each month (and with groceries, gas, clothes, etc I do WAY more than that), and yeah maybe the APY is only 0.2% but with the match I got last year I was able to pay some extra money to my credit card. And for my regular savings money, it has it's own account, my Keep the Change money goes in to its own account, it doesn't share money with anything else. It's a great product, and I love it. Maybe whoever wrote this article should read all of the fine print (like I did) before judging something.
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