Doing the Math with Wachovia Bank’s Way2Save Program

Wachovia Bank is offering the Way2Save Programs as as savings incentive-rich program to attract savings customers. The program links your Wachovia Bank checking account to a Way2Save account and rewards the account with:

$1 for each check card purchase and online bill payment
5% annual percentage yield on the balance
5% bonus in Year 1 for amount transferred up to $300
2% bonus in Year 2 and tear 3 for amount transferred up to $300

So a customer who opens the Way2Save savings account and transfers the maximum of $100 a month and conducts a combined 25 online bill payments or check card purchases a month will qualify for the maximum $300 bonus plus earn interest at 5% (unless Wachovia drops the rate) on the balance. The automatic savings tranfer from the checking account is a disciplined way to build savings and the 5% yield cannot be beat right now. It seems unlikely that the Wachovia will drop the rate below that of at least the top 20 highest yielding savings account posted on the money-rates.com Savings Account page, but the transaction bonus boosts the yields anyway. In the above example the effective yield would be close to 7.50%.

More details about the Wachovia Way2Save Program is available here.