Once I moved to Florida, I was lured in to signing up for new accounts as all of them seemed to offer free money simply by creating a new account, and many allowed myself as well as the person that referred me, to each earn cash in the form of a visa gift card. Who can say no to that?
You might be thinking, who needs multiple bank accounts? Well, I have two for personal and two for business, it just makes things so much easier when I receive checks from my design clients for my services and for their personal furnishings, which I need to keep separate.
To date, I've earned a cool $100 just by opening up new accounts, but I'll admit one of them is now never used and it's my Bank of America account. I typically look at my bank accounts online several times per week to make sure debits and credits are accurate and keep tabs on my finances. I hadn't looked at my BOM account for a few months because I knew the balance was very low but I happened to log in this morning and what do you know, there was $7.11 more in my account than there was before!
Bank of America offers a 'keep the change' program which allows you to save more money. They simply round all purchases up to the nearest dollar and add the change to your savings account. That's not the great part though-they will match your contribution at the end of the year! So, if you make a lot of purchases and won't miss 30 cents here and 50 cents there, you'll be on your way to saving in no time!
Now, I realize $7.11 is nothing to jump up and down about but considering I had already moved a lot of the "rounded up change" that was in that account into my checking account over the months I used this account, I was really surprised that there would be anything more. Well, that and the fact that I very rarely used this account. Imagine what you could do if you made it your primary account! They offer a tool on their site so you can estimate those numbers.
It is a free program and I highly encourage you all to join if you haven't already. Another fun perk is that they let you choose a personalized design for your debit card from a menu of designs through their 'my expressions' program. I chose the pink hello kitty card. A little juvenile yes, but cashiers everywhere think it's super cute too.
Do you use Bank of America and have you taken advantage of this program? How much money have you been able to save? Do you bank elsewhere with a similar program? Share it with us!
Here's to easy savings!
*I am not compensated in any way by Bank of America, this is merely personal experience that I wanted to share. Also, the above image is not of my personal card, it is a web image.
