Remember the family coin jar? That central repository that we filled up with our loose nickels, dimes, and pennies, until it was full enough to take down to the bank to exchange for wads of cold, hard cash? Whether we spent that cash on the occasional dreamy indulgence, or socked it away into savings, what made those coin jars most appealing—and effective—was the way real money seemed to emerge from next to nothing.

Now, modern on-line banking has created a grown-up version of the coin jar, in the form of Bank of St. Francisville’s new Savings Made Simple program. This automatic savings option allows users to round up their everyday debit card purchases to the nearest $1, $5 or $10, and automatically deposit the difference into a BSF account of their choosing.

“It could be a personal savings account, or the account of a loved one,” said BSF CFO and Executive Vice President of Operations Jim Chaffin. “You could also send the savings to a charity with a Bank of St. Francisville account.”

Jim participates in the program, choosing to round up his debit card purchases to the nearest $10. Then he has set the funds to deposit into the savings accounts of his three adult children on a rotating monthly basis. Jim goes about his business, using his debit card for regular expenses, and then each month, his rounded up “loose change” shows up in the accounts of his kids. Some months, the total is higher than others, but the deposit always comes as a welcome surprise.

“Depending on where you are in life, you can pick the amount you’d like to round up to, and where you’d like it to go,” says Jim. “It’s a great program because you can save with minimal effort. You really don’t notice it, especially if you choose a smaller amount.”

The process is easy. Use your debit card as normal for purchases like food, fuel, clothing and household items. At the end of any given day, you’ll see one debit transaction that reads “Savings Made Simple Transfer,” which reflects the total amount that day that was moved to the BSF savings account of your choosing.

Here’s what typical transactions look like: Say you purchased a cup of coffee and a muffin at The Birdman for $8.54, and you rounded up to the nearest $5. This would yield a savings of $1.46. Similarly, if you fill your car up at Wilcox Oil Chevron for $35.82 and rounded to the nearest $5, you would see a savings of $4.18. If those are your purchases for the day, you would see a total of $5.64 show up in savings. If that trend continued every day, you’d see almost $170 by the end of the month, and more than $2,000 by the end of the year! 

Savings Made Simple is another way your hometown bank is using technology and practical solutions to make life easier for its customers. For more information, visit https://www.bsf.net/service/savings. Ready to enroll in Savings Made Simple? Click HERE.