SaveUp makes paying your debts addictive and fun

[hugh3]

Alright, I think I understand the rules now.

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).

[danielamitay]

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.

[jessedhillon]

Savings accounts are subject to regulation D -- you can only transfer money out of them a maximum of six times a month: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulation_D_(FRB)

[felideon]

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.)

[woodesigns]

A lot of the information in the tour can be found here: https://www.saveup.com/about/how-it-works

Hopefully that's helpful.

[ssx]

We are definitely going to add a button to take the tour again. But for now, you can just go here:

saveup.com/?tour=1

[endlessvoid94]

This site has the exact mechanics of a slot machine.

[michaelcampbell]

Except the machine is your own "house" (bank accounts), right?

[Androsynth]

that's gamification in a nutshell

[run4yourlives]

...that you own.

[monkeygus]

this seems like it should be part of mint's site..