What Noisy Cats Are We

I can’t stop raving about Bank Of America’s Keep The Change program. It’s the epitome of automated penny pinching. If you don’t know what Keep The Change is, here is a brief explanation: BoA rounds up all your debit card purchases for a given day to the nearest dollar, then transfers the money every night from your checking to your BoA savings account. It’s a pretty simple thing, and as is the theme of this blog, it makes every penny count.

As an added bonus, BoA will match your Keep The Change transfers at 100% for the first three months, then at 5% every month afterwards. They pay out annually. I have only have my account with BoA for a couple of months, so I can’t really say how smoothly the matching things works. I can say that I’m moving over $20 per month from checking to savings, which even though is very little, is still something. Plus, the extra little $ from BoA at the end of the year will help me feel better about it. It’s free money!

Since the BoA savings account doesn’t give much interest at all, I transfer out the money as often as possible to my Etrade savings account. More on that later.