Thursday, January 6, 2011

Sayonara SmartyPig

There were 2 emails from SmartyPig in my inbox today.  Email # 1 announced that they were again cutting their rates, this time to 1.35% APR.  Email #2 asked me to spam all my friends about SmartyPig, with the promise of $25 to me should any of them create an account.

Let me get this straight SmartyPig.  You've changed your APR to the same rate that I get from Discover, and you want me to spam my friends about it?  What exactly am I going to say "Here's a savings account that makes you jump through a ton of hoops for the same APR as everyone else.  You gotta get you some of that?"  Give me a break.

For 1.75% APR, I was willing to put up with their site's eccentricities, but for 1.35%, I'll be closing out my account and moving everything to Discover.   There's not much in there at the moment anyway since most of my cash went to paying off a large debt to a family member,and it will be much simpler to build my new ef in a bank account that allows you to make deposits and withdrawals easily.

SmartyPig is not a bad deal for everyone.  They do offer a psychologically larger barrier to raiding the ef kitty, as you have to close out an entire goal to move the money into your checking account.  Additionally, multiple goals are easy to set up.  They also offer gift cards in lieu of cash that give you a bit of value over the amount you have saved.  However, these aren't things that I value, so I'm going back to Discover's plain vanilla account.

Do you currently have a SmartyPig account?  Are you planning to retain it?  Why or why not?

2 comments:

  1. I have Smarty Pig account and I'm not a huge fan but it's still earning more than my other accounts at this point.

    I'm probably going to send PiC a referral to take their money and then we'll cut and run :) Maybe. I have to find a better paying account though.

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