Raise your hand if you need help saving money. I’m guessing there are a lot of readers who have their hand in the air. Saving money for retirement or your child’s college education requires a different strategy than saving money for your emergency fund or other short term goals. Fortunately, with the launch of an innovative website in April 2008, saving money for specific short term goals has become easier for consumers who traditionally find it difficult to put money aside for specific goals.

What is SmartyPig?

Co-founded by Mike Ferrari and Jon Gaskell, SmartyPig was created to help consumers reach short term savings goals. The concept is brilliant in its simplicity. Basically you register for an account on SmartyPig, establish a savings goal and time frame in which you would like to achieve your goal and SmartyPig does the rest of the work. For example, if you want to save money for your next family vacation you simply enter how much money you want to save and by what date and SmartyPig will determine how much money you have to put away to reach your goal. You then set up an automated withdrawal from your bank account to fund your new savings account. Once you register your account you can simply set it and forget it.

Where does your money go?

If you are like me, you are probably wondering where exactly your money is being held. Once you authorize automated withdrawals your money is held at West Bank, an FDIC insured bank. SmartyPig works to provide the most competitive interest rates in the country allowing your money to grow while you save for your goal.

What about security?

Now that you know where you money is being held, the next logical question would be concerning security. SmartyPig offers a secure account set-up, account log-in, timed log-off and a powerful state of the art firewall that blocks unauthorized entry. All account information is encrypted and the website is secured with VeriSign Extended Validation SSL. Find more security information on SmartyPig’s security page.

Unique Features.

SmartyPig offers unique features that make saving and accessing your money easier than ever before. Not only are you able to save for your short term goals, but friends and family can offer their support as well. You can make your goal public on social networks like MySpace or Facebook as well as your blog or website and other people can support or even contribute toward your goal if they wish.

Once you reach your savings goal you will have the option of accessing your money via a SmartyPig debit card (accepted wherever MasterCard is accepted). Another option which can increase your savings even more (up to 6.00%) would be receiving your money via a gift card from participating retailers (list of retailers provided on website). Of course you can also simply transfer your money back into your bank account allowing you the freedom to use your money however you please.

SmartyPig certainly appears to offer a unique way to set and achieve short term savings goals that otherwise might get placed on the back burner in a shaky economy. More and more consumers are adopting a new mindset when it comes to spending and saving money which will certainly only add to the popularity of online money management or savings tools.

Tags: review, saving strategies, short term savings, smartypig

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 6:43 am and is filed under reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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