Co-founder at SaveUp here. SaveUp is absolutely free. Think of it as a rewards program that is scalable to any financial instrument. You can earn SaveUp credits with an type of account ( ING Savings Account, Chase Credit Card, etc).
Basic concept is we reward you for good financial actions. We have sponsors and will get more sponsors to offset the prizes, as well as financial referrals.
Your reward can possibly be $2million or any of the prizes on our site.
We will never accept financial products that are not in the best interest of our users. Nor will we ever sell your information.
We are just trying create an entirely new rewards program that is free and self sustaining. Our inspiration comes from Prize-linked savings. Check out this article about PLS.
In the end, it will all depend on what offers you can secure from companies that like penny-wise customers. It's a very relevant demographic, for sure. I would think the pitches would be for savings and investment products, insurance, mortgage refi, coupons, group buys, and loyalty programs. It's a good business plan, but it really depends on the quality of the offers. Consumers have been conditioned to distrust financial/insurance products, since they are so often a scam wrapped in a scam – even when offered by the biggest names.
I visited this site and had no clue what to do after 5 minutes.. Is this like Mint? I need to link all my accounts so they can verify it? I get points for reading the articles? It's just a lottery? All confused... horrible intro.
I signed up and quickly went through the tour, but now I realize I went too quickly. I don't know how to redo the tour (or if it's even possible), and can't find anything with a similar explanation.
Then again, it's mostly self-explanatory: just click on a Play Now button. :)
(EDIT: Hah! This is kind of cool. I'm playing slots, except not spending any money. (Au contraire, the more I save the more I can play.)
So I have to sign up for your service before I find out what it does? I can't find any details at all outside the media coverage, and if I'm gonna sign up to turn my financial affairs into a game I'm gonna want to know what the rules are first.
You earn one "credit" for every dollar you deposit into a registered savings account (or every dollar you pay off a registered mortgage, or whatever).
There's no limit to how many credits you can earn, but there is a limit to how many credits you can spend: a maximum of thirty a day.
Credits are spent by putting 'em into a big slot machine which dispenses prizes whose value and winning probability are unknown. Hopefully you can get something, though.
The best way to game the system seems to be:
1. Move, say, $10,000 out of your savings account into your checking account
2. Sign up for saveup
3. Move the $10,000 back into your checking account, claim your ten thousand credits
4. Spin the wheel three times a day for the rest of the year and hope you get enough prizes to make the effort worthwhile.
Do I have it right?
edit: Aha! I found more information on the precise rules of the contest: https://www.saveup.com/rules including the probabilities of winning prizes. For instance, your odds of winning the two million dollar prize they're so keen on talking about are 1:170,230,452. On the other hand, your chances of winning $10 are one in 4133. There seem to be various different types of drawing which you can enter, but none of 'em seems to have better than a 1:1000 chance of winning even the most trivial amount of money (five dollars).
I went through and found the expected values of the Jackpot and $50k instant win tickets, and found the expected value (excluding the inclusive value of additional credit rewards) to be ~$0.016
By that metric, 1 credit is worth $0.0016, and 10,000 is worth $16.
Or to put it another way, you can, at the cost of an extra daily chore and a bunch of "special offer" emails, earn about four point eight cents a day. I'm afraid I'm just not sold on the value proposition.
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[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 27.8 ms ] threadBasic concept is we reward you for good financial actions. We have sponsors and will get more sponsors to offset the prizes, as well as financial referrals.
We will never accept financial products that are not in the best interest of our users. Nor will we ever sell your information.
We are just trying create an entirely new rewards program that is free and self sustaining. Our inspiration comes from Prize-linked savings. Check out this article about PLS.
http://www.freakonomics.com/2010/11/18/freakonomics-radio-co...
Then again, it's mostly self-explanatory: just click on a Play Now button. :)
(EDIT: Hah! This is kind of cool. I'm playing slots, except not spending any money. (Au contraire, the more I save the more I can play.)
Hopefully that's helpful.
saveup.com/?tour=1
edit: Wait, I found https://www.saveup.com/about/faq
You earn one "credit" for every dollar you deposit into a registered savings account (or every dollar you pay off a registered mortgage, or whatever).
There's no limit to how many credits you can earn, but there is a limit to how many credits you can spend: a maximum of thirty a day.
Credits are spent by putting 'em into a big slot machine which dispenses prizes whose value and winning probability are unknown. Hopefully you can get something, though.
The best way to game the system seems to be:
1. Move, say, $10,000 out of your savings account into your checking account
2. Sign up for saveup
3. Move the $10,000 back into your checking account, claim your ten thousand credits
4. Spin the wheel three times a day for the rest of the year and hope you get enough prizes to make the effort worthwhile.
Do I have it right?
edit: Aha! I found more information on the precise rules of the contest: https://www.saveup.com/rules including the probabilities of winning prizes. For instance, your odds of winning the two million dollar prize they're so keen on talking about are 1:170,230,452. On the other hand, your chances of winning $10 are one in 4133. There seem to be various different types of drawing which you can enter, but none of 'em seems to have better than a 1:1000 chance of winning even the most trivial amount of money (five dollars).
By that metric, 1 credit is worth $0.0016, and 10,000 is worth $16.
Or to put it another way, you can, at the cost of an extra daily chore and a bunch of "special offer" emails, earn about four point eight cents a day. I'm afraid I'm just not sold on the value proposition.