The Best Automatic Savings Apps (to Grow Your Wealth in 2017)

Chime makes it simple and effortless to save money with their automated savings plan. They are also passionate about making you feel secure. They have automated transaction alerts as well as daily customer support for all your banking needs.

Chime’s mission is to help you create a healthier financial life for you and your family. By pairing technology with a strong mission, they are able to give their members an outstanding banking experience.

Digit is so confident in its safe-to-withdraw algorithms that it offers to pay overdraft fees if a transfer leaves you overdrawn. You can request money from your Digit account anytime and you will generally receive it the next business day.

Digit communicates with you via text message, and you must sign up online, as it is technically not an app. You will receive a text message once per day with your current bank balance. You also have the option to receive more detailed text check-ins, which allow you to see recent debits. This can give you a no-effort daily snapshot of your finances

Digit recently started paying customers a 1% annual bonus (paid out every 3 months) on the balance of the account. Nice!

The big downside to Digit is the new monthly fee of $2.99. $3,588 is what you'll need to keep in the account on average to earn enough bonus to negate the montly fee.

It’s also important to note that the app will provide you with a daily summary of your spending, which includes automatic categorization of your purchases. A simple and easy-to-read daily breakdown of your spending habits will help you to improve those habits and take better care of your finances.

Though it has only been around since January 2017, Clarity Money is already shaking up the financial tech world. Clarity Money’s mission is to be a service that will both watch your back when it comes to your money choices, and help you take control of your financial life. The founders of the app believe that consumers deserve nothing less than transparency and advocacy in their financial choices, and they designed Clarity Money to provide it.

After you download the app onto your iPhone or other Apple device (it is not currently available for Android), you then connect your accounts to Clarity, and the program analyzes your spending data before making suggestions to you on how you can optimize and save your money.

Clarity Money is able to do this through their Bill Negotiation & Lowering service, which asks users to give the program permission to negotiate and/or cancel any of your recurring services on your behalf. The program is able to make these negotiations by applying discounts and coupons you may be entitled to but were unaware of. When the program is successful in lowering your bill, Clarity Money will keep 33% of the savings as their commission, leaving you with the remaining 2/3 of the difference.

There is also an algorithm on the app that will help you to find lower interest rate credit cards and/or personal loans. You can also get get your credit score for free through the app, which works with Experian and uses the VantageScore model.

Finally, the program identifies wasteful recurring charges and will cancel those services for you. The site promises that Clarity will not make a recommendation that does not objectively improve your financial well-being, so you can feel secure that your finances will improve by acting on the app’s recommendations.

Once you have reached a minimum of $5 in roundups, the money is transferred into an investment portfolio, which the app helps you to choose by asking you a series of questions.

The five portfolio options include index funds from investment firms such as iShares, Pimco, and Vanguard.

In addition to the roundup option, you may also set up a recurring transfer on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis, or you may make single lump sum transfers.

You have the option of withdrawing your funds from your Acorns investment account at any time, and the money will arrive in your checking account within five to seven business days. There is no limit on how much you can withdraw.

Acorns has two different fee structures. Users with more than $5,000 in their investment portfolios will pay 0.25% of their holdings per year. Those who haven’t hit the $5,000 mark pay $1 per month for the service. This cost can be pretty steep for Acorns beginners. For instance, a $200 portfolio will pay $12 over one year—which equals a painful 6% fee.

For a small fee, you can choose a portfolio that matches your risk tolerance as well as an investment strategy that works best for you. Fill out Stash’s investment guide and they will help you choose a portfolio that is appropriate for your needs.

Your investments are protected against institutional failure by Securities Investor Protect Corporation (SIPC). Your holdings and cash are held at APEX Clearing Corp.

The program also helps you choose a savings amount that fits with your age, income, and location, and it suggests smart financial goals that match your situation—although you can always create your own custom goals. Rize also helps users by suggesting increases to the amount saved each month as your circumstances change.

To make sure Rize does not overdraw your checking account, the program notifies you of the transfer a few days before it happens, giving you time to pause the transaction. Rize also automatically double-checks the balance in your checking account before the transfer to make sure you have sufficient funds. (The website is coy about what happens when it finds an insufficient balance in your checking account. I suspect it pauses the transaction and contacts you, but the details are not clear).

Your Rize account is a savings account, which will earn 0.30% APY interest, although rates are subject to change. As a savings account, Rize also offers SIPC insurance protection up to $250,000, similar to FDIC insurance of the same amount in a traditional bank. You may withdraw money from your Rize account at any time.

Rize also recently launched two new “Power Up” features: Accelerate and Boost. Accelerate drives you to save more by increasing your monthly savings by 1% each month. Boost helps bulk up your savings by transferring an additional bit of spare change when it makes sense, usually once or twice a week. Transfers will range from pennies up to $5 or 5% of your monthly savings (whichever is lower), to give you that extra little Boost to help you reach your goal. Rize's Power Ups can be turned on or off at any time.

By far the most unusual aspect of Rize is how it handles fees. There is no set monthly fee for the program, but Rize asks users to contribute a small amount of the money you save each month—the exact amount is up to the user.

Like Acorns, Keep the Change rounds up each purchase you make with your Bank of America debit card, and places the change in your savings account. For instance, if you spend $4.17 on a cup of coffee and a muffin, $0.83 will automatically be placed in your savings account, and your checking account will be debited for a full $5.

If you do not have enough funds in your account to cover your Keep the Change roundups for the day, Bank of America cancels the Keep the Change transfer for that day in order to protect you from overdraft. Also, if you end up returning an item or having a purchase canceled, the Keep the Change transfer associated with that purchase does remain in your savings account.

The Bank of America savings account where your money is transferred does accrue interest, although the current rate for a regular savings account is a whopping 0.01% APY. You can access your money in that savings at any time.

Bank of America offers a mobile app that will allow you to monitor your Keep the Change savings, along with your other banking.