Scotiabank "Bank The Rest" Program

Scotiabank had a really neat commercial running for their "Bank the Rest" program today:

(Don't get me started on the whole "spenders vs savers" duality...like we have to choose one or the other...)

It looked interesting, so I looked it up online at banktherest.com. It's a pretty cool website, they explain how the program works and they have a great intereative demo where you can make pretend purchases and see how much you would save with the program.

I chose to pretend I was rounding everything up to the next 5 dollars, cause I'm hardcore like that. I also pretended to make purchases of lunch 5 times a week, gas once a week, and a game once a month.

It all adds up. It's 75$ in savings for the lunch (saving 3.75$ every day for five days for a month), 10.08$ for the gas every month, and 3.85$for the game.

For someone who is not inclined to save, this may be a relatively painless way of doing so, especially if you make lots of small regular purchases.

Even though I rarely use my debit card, something like this might get me to switch: it seems like it would be a painless way to start setting up an emergency fund!

There are still some questions I would like to have answered before I think about switching to this debit card:

1) Are there any fees associated with opening this account, or the high interest savings account that works in conjunction with your debit card?
2) How easy is it to go into overdraft? For example, lets say you have signed up to round everything to the next 5.00$, you have 12$ in your account and make a purchase for 10$. Will the bank still round you up to 15.00$ worth of purchases, or will the system be inteligent enough to stop if you are in danger of going into overdraft?

Well, the FAQ answers these questions (no fees for the program, nor will it send you into overdraft or furthur overdraft), but I'm still going to call and go in to get my answers, just to be certain.

If you're interested you can call 1-800-4SCOTIA (1-800-472-6842)!

It's currently 6:00pm on a Friday here, so I won't be able to call or go to the bank until later to ask, but rest assured, I'll update this post when I do!

Here's what I have learned from this today:

You can be a spender if you're a saver, but you can't be a saver if you're a spender (unless of course you find some way to save as you spend...)!