Gay couple sitting on the ground with pet pug and daughter looking at a tablet together

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 building the savings — well, let’s just say it’s easier said than done.

Ally Bank is making saving a little easier with smart saving tools, features of Ally Bank’s Online Savings Account. These features help you organize, optimize, and analyze your money, so you can push your savings further.

What are these 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 buckets as digital envelopes —they allow you to divvy up your savings into different categories … without the need for multiple bank accounts or complicated math. You can create up to 10 savings buckets within one account, each 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.

Illustration of an iphone showing savings buckets on the screen: Emergencies, home, vacations, occasions, education, family, tax payments, bill payments, vehicles, pets, make your own.

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 Bank 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.

Round ups

This booster rounds up your spending to the nearest dollar and then automatically transfers the money from your Ally Bank Interest Checking account into your Ally Bank Online 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.

Watch your savings grow.

Another aspect of Ally Bank’s 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 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 smart savings tools.

Get started.