
Everyone knows that saving money is essential — you know about the all-important rainy-day fund, a vacation fund, and the many, many types of accounts targeting different goals. But when it comes to creating a plan for your goals, managing your money, and actually doing the saving — well, let’s just say it’s easier said than done.
We at Ally Bank are making saving that much easier by upgrading our Online Savings Account to include a new set of smart savings tools designed to fit your needs. They’ll help you organize, optimize, and analyze your money, so you can push your savings further.
What are these new tools, you ask? Read on to understand what savings buckets and boosters are and how they can help make your money perform even smarter.
Organize using savings buckets.
Buckets are our answer to the question of how to organize your money within your savings account. Think of these buckets as digital envelopes — they allow you to divvy up your savings into different categories … without the need for multiple bank accounts or difficult math. You can create up to 10 different savings buckets that live within one account, each one dedicated to a different goal, like a vacation to Hawaii, a rainy-day fund, or a kitchen renovation.
These buckets help 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 your little one’s college education or your 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.
Optimize with 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 (see above!) 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 (it doesn’t even have to be an Ally checking account!) and activate the booster. We’ll start monitoring your linked checking accounts to identify safe-to-save money and automatically transfer it to your 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.
Watch your savings grow.
Another new aspect to your Online 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 bird’s eye 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 new savings tools do just that — they’re our way of helping you build better saving habits that take your strategy to the next level.
Make your money perform smarter with Ally Bank’s new smart savings tools.
Comment on this article
Comments
Damien on February 14, 2020 at 11:22pm
How can I enable this?
Ally on March 2, 2020 at 2:07pm
Hi Damien, buckets and boosters should be automatically enabled within your Online Savings Account. If you have questions, please give us a call at 1-877-247-2559, or chat with us online at ally.com, one of our team members will be more than happy to help you get started.
Steve on April 24, 2020 at 10:38am
Great article!
Ally on May 5, 2020 at 12:11pm
Thanks for reading, Steve.
Alison D. on June 4, 2020 at 2:59am
This doesn’t say how to enable it. I’m not seeing any option on the app or mobile site
Ally on June 10, 2020 at 5:09pm
Hi Alison, buckets and boosters should automatically populate when you log into your account. If you’re still having issues, please give us a call at 1-877-247-2559 or chat with us online at ally.com and one of our team members will be more than happy to assist you.
Khang on June 20, 2020 at 5:28pm
I think the buckets are great for organization, i have been using it myself. Just a suggestion: But please implement a add/subtract +/- feature. Currently whenever i use money from my buckets, say i get my car serviced and used money from my vehicles bucket. I then have to take the total of my vehicles bucket, subtract my bill manually, and then PUNCH in the new total into my bucket.
Ally on June 21, 2020 at 1:36pm
Thanks for the feedback, we’ll pass this along to our team.
Shaun on July 2, 2020 at 8:46pm
Do surprise savings count towards your transaction limits of 6 per month?
Matt on July 16, 2020 at 11:58am
Do surprise savings count towards your transaction limits of 6 per month?
Ally on July 16, 2020 at 12:12pm
Hi Matt, if you’ll give us a call at 1-877-247-2559, or chat with us online at ally.com, a team member will be happy to help answer your questions.
SMG on July 18, 2020 at 1:38pm
If I open a savings account and divide my money into six buckets, how will these buckets import into my financial software? Will each bucket import individually, as if I had six different accounts?
Ally on July 18, 2020 at 2:20pm
Hi SMG, if you’ll give us a call at 1-877-247-2559, or chat with us online at ally.com, a team member will be happy to discuss your situation further and advise.
Manny on July 23, 2020 at 10:19am
How do you delete these buckets? I can add them but I haven't been able to delete them.
Ally on July 23, 2020 at 11:29am
Hi Manny, if you’ll give us a call at 1-877-247-2559, or chat with us online at ally.com, a team member will be happy to discuss your situation further and advise.
Bridger M. on August 10, 2020 at 2:39pm
If this is already a feature, could someone let me know how do do this? Otherwise, I would like to make a suggestion. Is there a way to have a fixed dollar amount automatically transferred to individual buckets each month from Core Savings? Say I want to put $100 away for vacations, $300 for a car, $200 for an emergency fund. I see that there is an option on "How money comes in" for a percentage, but I want a specific dollar amount to be added each month.
Ally on August 12, 2020 at 12:23pm
Hi Bridger, thank you for the suggestion. We will pass this feedback along to our team.
Ayla F. on August 13, 2020 at 10:29am
I love buckets for saving, but I wish there were a way to pull from the buckets for specific payments. For example, I have a bills bucket, it would be great if I could set it up for all of my electric company payments to directly pull from that bucket. Right now I have to manually go in and rearrange to core savings from my buckets which isn't really conducive to using buckets.
Ally on August 13, 2020 at 10:39am
Hi Ayla, we’ll pass this feedback along to our team. Thanks for the comment.
Tina K. on August 14, 2020 at 2:02pm
How can I utilize my checking account to remove to savings if I round up on all of my checking withdrawals to the next dollar. Ex: 10.02. Take out 11.00 and .98 cents goes into savings. With each transaction?
Angela on August 31, 2020 at 7:31pm
I think 3 times a week is extreme . Are they trying to get me to fully use this bank? Once a week is great it’s hard to keep up with my account if they are constantly transferring money from my daily account over to your bank.
Noam on September 2, 2020 at 3:44pm
Instead of analyzing checking accounts, can Ally also analyze credit card spending to better its surprise savings?
Kevin on September 10, 2020 at 11:24am
Really need to be able to delete a bucket without having to contact support! Please add that feature soon.
Monther A. on September 20, 2020 at 6:32pm
Hello .. my friend, I am looking for linked accounts in my primary e-mail, but I don’t know how to access it. Can you help me with this matter?
B S. on October 8, 2020 at 11:11am
It would be great if you could apply a recurring transaction to a bucket, as a rule or something. Say you put in X amount of dollars to a bucket for a bill that is due every 3 months. If that transaction could get applied to a specific bucket, that would be great. Or even the ability to do it manualy.
Kyle on October 11, 2020 at 3:05pm
Will the bucket system be recognized inside of Mint?
Justin on October 12, 2020 at 11:42am
Suggestion: Would be great to set a dollar amount limit on buckets (defaulted to no limit). For instance, I know the exact amount of money I am trying to save for vacation. I wouldn't want/need for any money to go into the vacation bucket past the designated amount. Once your desired amount for buckets is reached, send notification (Ally app and/or email) letting the account holder know they have reached their goal. Maybe any "extra" money that would go into that bucket, would be differed to the Core Savings bucket.
Ally on October 12, 2020 at 12:12pm
Hi Justin, thanks for the suggestion. We’ll pass this along to our team.
Alex on October 23, 2020 at 2:41pm
I have just recently started using Buckets and am kind of in love with them. It makes a huge difference just psychologically in how I look at my savings. That said, I'd like to add another voice to those asking for more in-depth Bucket management. For example, I'd like to move a specific amount from my checking account to a specific Bucket each month, and for certain transactions to draw from that Bucket, while other transactions operate as normal. Otherwise, as others have mentioned, there's still quite a lot of manual micromanagement involved.
Kate on November 9, 2020 at 10:10am
Would like to be able to delete buckets; it doesn't seem like this should be so difficult to do.
Ally on November 9, 2020 at 11:12am
Hi Kate, if you’ll please give us a call at 1-877-247-2559, or chat with us online at ally.com, one of our team members will be more than happy to help assist you.
Jacob A. on November 13, 2020 at 8:04pm
Will this option be available for checking accounts? It would be amazing to have this option to organize bills.
Ally on November 13, 2020 at 9:55pm
Thanks for the comment, Jacob. We’ll pass this feedback along to our team.
Enoch on December 10, 2020 at 8:40pm
Love the buckets concept! I've been waiting for someone to build this for years... However, without being able to easily manage transactions across buckets as the comments reflect, it looks like my spreadsheets are just as effective.... As soon as you streamline the process I can't wait to start using this!!!
LaKeshia on December 19, 2020 at 2:32pm
Hello! Just set up my account and I’m excited! The buckets are why I’m here and I agree with the others on dollar amount feature. In addition, I’d like to suggest being able to add goals to the buckets and a visual tracker for the goals. Look forward to organizing my money! 😊
Ally on December 19, 2020 at 2:35pm
Hi LaKeshia, we love hearing this! Thank you for being an Ally customer. Also, we’ll pass your suggestion along to the team.
Stephen R. on December 23, 2020 at 7:28pm
Your income requirements are too simplistic. I am 77 and have over $1 million in cash, $5 million in securities that can be instantly converted to cash, $600 k in alternative investments ( early stage companies in convertible preferred stock ), $200 k in precious metals, $3 million in personal real estate and I am currently saving over $300 k per year because I have no debt, own my boat and 5 cars outright, and still work and earn 7 figures per year plus Social Security Benefits and over $49k in dividends plus long term capital gains, and S-Corp distributions from my four businesses. It all depends on where you are in life and your priorities. I can live on Social Security benefits and my investment income, never touching my investments because I have no debt. I lead a VERY comfortable life with my only extravagances are propensity to always fly First Class and to have private car service to and from airports , and high end wines up to $250 per bottle.