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Be Smart & Be A Pig

  April 5

This post may contain affiliate links.

So, I know I geek out a little bit about budgeting and the like.

I can’t help it. It’s like a challenge to myself. I pretty much obsess over our pie chart each semester and love to track how we’re doing and much savings we’ll have left over.

It’s like a game or a puzzle.

But, one thing always bothered me.

I could never visualize our savings.

What I mean by that is that I wanted to save for several things – trips, future kiddos, future moving expenses, plane tickets home, a general emergency fund, etc. However, I couldn’t see those goals when they were in all one lump sum in my savings account.

I consistently asked banks if I could have several savings accounts and name them different things so that I knew which goal they were going to. No luck. No dice.

Finally the other day, as my poor computer chuggs along clinging to life, I googled “high yield savings accounts” and started to do research on the best ones.

Wouldn’t you know, I found Smarty Pig.

Seriously, how cute it this guy?

This is a super innovative online bank that allows you to open several high yield savings accounts with names to save for your goals.
This is really exactly what I’ve been looking for. It’s a place where I can store savings out of sight and a bank that will automatically withdraw as little as $10 a month and put it in various accounts for me. It’s also a bank that shows me a cute pig/piggy bank and tells me how close I am to my goal.
I think it’s fabulous marketing, genius branding, and with a social media component where you can tell people about your goals to keep you accountable, it’s definitely fit for the 21st century.
Of course, the lovely Smarty Pig folks didn’t pay me in any way to write this review (but they totally sent me a t-shirt after I professed my undying love for them on twitter.)
Anyway, here are my goals so far:
I’m super excited about it and will keep you updated, if only for my own purposes of keeping accountable!
Anyone else saving for something big? I want to hear all about it!
P.S. If you benefited from this review and want to open an account, please e-mail me at [email protected] so I can send you a referral e-mail. It won’t cost you anything but I would get a referral bonus which would go to help support this blog – thanks!

12 responses to “Be Smart & Be A Pig

  1. do you mind if i ask what the percentage is on those accounts? i use ing direct,and while they used to be high yield savings, they are now down to like 1% or less…it’s so sad 🙁

    1. Great question! Similarly Smarty Pig used to be much higher than the average bank – like 3% but have also dropped to about 1% or less. However, they say it’s because they are offering new perks like cash back cards and an interesting thing where you can either have your money put on your debit card or actually get a gift card which will give you up to 12%. So for example, if I am saving for Christmas, I can elect to get an Amazon gift card instead of my cash, and Amazon will give me 5% of what I saved on top. So, that’s pretty neat.

  2. Why didn’t someone think of this sooner??? What a great idea. We have several accounts at different banks for different purposes (and to hide it away from ourselves, as you said), but this sounds so much simpler!

  3. My budgeting is … a little smaller scale and a LOT more ad-hoc than yours. It doesn’t matter what kind of account I have, the money in it WILL get spent. I tend to find that I have $0 in every account at the end of every month.

    Every account except one, that is: the pile of silver bullion under my bed. I regularly seek out whichever deal on ebay has the lowest premium over spot price and buy it. I figure it’ll eventually get liquidated specifically for a down payment on an inexpensive house. If the price is high when I need it, great! And if it’s not, it’s silver, so I just have to wait.

  4. It says you {meaning YOU personally} could get a reward card for referring a friend? Refer ME! I’ll sign up! 🙂

  5. I’ve been wondering about something like this too! Thanks.

  6. Cat, this is fabulous! I am the exact same way with budgeting, wanting to know exactly what we have and how much we have to go. However, until seeing this site, everything we have been doing is on our own charts, graphs and tallies. Thank you for this. Hahah I fear that my obsession with budgeting, and organization, is about to grow substantially larger!!

  7. I use ally for the same thing! I have seven savings accounts and I can name them whatever I want to save towards goals. The percentage is pretty high too.

  8. This is so great! I’m looking for ways to get out of debt and save for future life events, and SmartyPig might be the ticket. Thanks!

  9. I set up my smarty pig account today! We currently have a checking and savings through the same bank. I moved our savings to smarty pig and split it into emergency fund and a vacation fund with recurring payments on pay day into each account. I plan on reaching my emergency fund goal and vacation fund in the next year. Woohoo! 🙂

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