I saw this advertisement recently from a bank called Scotiabank here and they were offering this debit card program called “Bank The Rest†which is suppose to help you save money. Essentially, whenever you spend money with a debit card through this program they will automatically deposit some money into an account dubbed as the “Money Master†account.
An example I read is you can instruct the bank to round off your purchases to the next dollar and that difference will go into your savings. It would be something like if you told them to round off your purchase to the next dollar that means if you bought an item for 75 cents then 25 cents will go into your savings account. I suppose in theory it is like you putting your loose change into your savings. You can read more about it at http://www.scotiabank.com/BankTheRest/
I am personally having a very hard time seeing how this can be effective in the long run though. The first thing of course is that I would rather use a credit card to get points and free cash. As well, since this plan essentially takes money out of one account to the other I would be inclined to say that it is a little redundant. I can imagine the transaction fees too from using the debit card so much unless you are on an unlimited plan.
This is more of a tool to use as a wakeup call I’d say meaning you can see if you spend way too much to be able to accumulate a large savings this way. It would kind of be a funny and useful tool for a parent to use on a kid or teenager though assuming they aren’t exactly bank savvy and can be a way to direct funds into a savings account.