Last week week I signed up for Wachovia’s Way2 Save  program to try and stow away some money at a higher rate than ING Direct.  I can save some money at 5% APY and receive a bonus from the bank on my anniversary day. It’s been saving mode here at home and I want to sock away as much as possible. My temporary job is over and we managed to deposit $1,650 away in our joint savings.

We’re proud of it, but we’re hoping to build it up more by year’s end.

What are the Way2Save?

There are three ways to get money into my Way2Save account:

  • Use my Wachovia Check Card for purchases
  • Use Wachovia’s Online Bill Pay
  • Make automatic payments

Wachovia moves $1 from your checking to your savings whenever you use the bill payment service and use the debit card. You can also set up an automatic monthly deposit up to $100.

Since I use online bill pay, I thought this would be an easy way for me to deposit money into the account. If I set up some automatic transfers that would help build up the emergency fund savings just a little bit more.

What’s a Good Way2Save?

Of course, I’m just as I’m feeling good about joining this program, I catch a tweet from Consumerist today about Wachovia’s program. Someone used the basic rules to see if they could deposit more by sending several small payments. Instead it backfired and she ended up with $5,000  to pay.

Well, I’m not going to focus on using bill pay for deposits. I’ll stick with automatic deposits.

Photo Credit: Neubie

Laura Martinez

Laura Martinez