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!

Wesabe is an amazing useful personal finance site which provides access to all of your checking and savings accounts under one site in order to better track your finances. I had a chance to chat with Marc Hedlund, the CEO of Wesabe about security, user rights, features, upcoming and the community focus of this excellent site. This article is longer than our normal fare but stick with it if you want to get to know your money using a cool online tool.

The first thing you'll want to know before handing over your banking information to a company is how secure they are. Wesabe provides its users with industry standard encryption to protect your financial data. Unlike their competitor, Mint who uses a third party to handle security and data Wesabe has taken the processes in house and developed their own system. The decision is actually a great one when it comes to security and the rights you have over your data. Marc shared with me that one of the main reasons they built their own system was to be able to offer users a Data Bill of Rights, allowing you to completely delete your data at any time, something third party vendors would have kept. Aside from keeping your passwords and financial information from a company you don't have a business relationship with the Wesabe system also has the ability to get updates about your transactions as often as your bank provides updates providing you with more accurate information.

Another cool feature of being a Wesabe user is that there are currently 4 ways to upload your data based on how much information you want to trust Wesabe with. Three of these methods don't require that you provide Wesabe with any of your banking credentials and the fourth is an automatic uploader which logs in and updates your account information throughout the day after you provide your login information to Wesabe. Many users begin with the manual upload and as their trust in Wesabe grows, move to more automatic methods of uploading. The fully automatic uploader came about from user requests and is the method that Marc uses to upload to Wesabe.