Everyone knows that saving money is essential, but when it comes to creating a plan for your goals, managing your money and actually building the savings — well, let’s just say it’s easier said than done.
Ally Bank’s Savings Account makes saving a little easier with features to help you organize, optimize and analyze your money, so you can push your savings further. Here’s how buckets and boosters can help make your money perform even smarter.
What is a savings bucket?
Buckets are our answer to how to organize your money within your Ally Bank Savings Account. Think of buckets as digital envelopes — they allow you to divvy up your savings into different categories without the need for multiple bank accounts or complicated spreadsheets.
Read more: Step-by-step guide on how to open an Ally Bank account.
Buckets contextualize your savings, which can help motivate you to save more. It’s one thing to see a big lump sum of money in your account, and another thing entirely to see exactly how much you’ve saved (and how far you have to go) for a little one’s college education or a big backpacking trip. We want to help you visualize your goals — so you can get there faster.
It’s important to note that you’ll still earn interest on the total balance of your account (meaning, all your savings buckets combined), so you’re not losing out on that compound interest.
Buckets contextualize your savings, which can help motivate you to save more.
How to set up buckets
After you log on to your Ally account and click into your Ally Bank Savings Account, you will see an option to look at your “Buckets.” From there, you can manage your buckets.
You can create up to 30 savings buckets within one account, each dedicated to a different goal, like a vacation overseas, a rainy day fund or a kitchen renovation. When you add a bucket, you can set bucket goals to choose the target amount you want to save and your goal date. You also decide how to distribute money into that bucket and can select to turn on savings boosters to help you reach your goal.
What are savings boosters?
Boosters are tools that accelerate your ability to save by doing some of the heavy lifting for you. Think of each booster as a way to optimize your money — and all of it is automated once you activate the booster in your account so you don’t even have to think about it.
Recurring transfers
This booster allows you to have your money automatically transferred into different buckets on a schedule that makes sense to you. Setting up recurring transfers helps give back valuable time you would’ve otherwise spent planning and manually making individual deposits — not to mention, it makes saving an automatic part of your life.
Surprise Savings
Surprise Savings analyzes your spending to find areas where you could be saving more — and it will move that safe-to-transfer money for you. All you need to do is link your checking accounts and activate the booster. We’ll start monitoring your linked checking accounts to identify safe-to-save money and automatically transfer it to your Ally Bank Savings Account, where it could be performing smarter for you. We’ll do all the analyzing for you — but don’t worry, we’ll only make transfers in amounts under $100 and no more than three times per week.
Round ups
This booster rounds up your spending to the nearest dollar and then automatically transfers the money from your Ally Bank Spending Account into your Ally Bank Savings Account once you've accrued at least $5. For example, if you spend $70.72 at the grocery store, you’ll be $0.28 closer to a round ups transfer. This microsaving strategy can help you save little by little toward your goals — without having to do it all manually.
Watch your savings grow
Another aspect of Ally Bank’s Savings Account is an in-depth analysis of your performance over time. We’ll show you a personalized chart that tracks your progress (and your projected growth) and gives you a view of your savings strategy. These insights will help you see how you’re doing now and get a sense of what you could be doing better.
You deserve a bank that makes saving money easier for you. Our savings and spending tools do just that — they’re our way of helping you build better habits that take your strategy to the next level.
