Save Your Spare Change in Crypto With RoundlyX
Years ago, Bank of America came out with a "keep the change" program where they would round up your expenses to the next dollar amount and take that difference, and put it into a savings account.
I thought it was pretty nifty. After a while, I found better ways to do this, for example, Acorns. The Acorns service does the same thing, but better and it also lets you add recurring savings programs and round-up multipliers. You can ask it to automatically take a certain amount every month and put it towards your savings and investment goals
Update 2021-12-29
I'm disappointed and I should have done more research before jumping into this. Please note, RoundlyX might still work for you, but it won't work for me. Acorns (mentioned below), actually withdraws the round-up amounts on a regular basis, so you don't really notice it in your bank account. RoundlyX doesn't.
For all intents and purposes, RoundlyX is just a glorified savings/investment plan that you still have to monitor and execute. If you decide you want to buy crypto in increments of say, $50.00, then RoundlyX will monitor your account and when you have accumulated that amount of "spare change" they will withdraw that entire amount $50.00 and make your purchase on your behalf. In other words, you're better off using your exchange's own recurring buy system to just buy $50.00 every month and save yourself the fee of RoundlyX.
This might work for you, but it won't work for me; YMMV. I've already canceled my Acorns account and will probably cancel this as well. I also use Digit, which I think can easily replace both services. Here's a Twitter thread where I had an exchange with the RoundlyX folks if you want to read it.
TL;DR
RoundlyX has a "spare change" round-up savings program that allows you to buy crypto automatically. It tracks your transactions, rounds up to the nearest dollar, and then takes that amount and buys whatever cryptocurrency you want in your favorite exchange, you can sign up here.
Acorns basically invests your spare change for you
The best difference between Acorns and a regular "keep the change" program is that you can have Acorns invest the money for you.
You don't get to pick individual investments, instead, you pick the levels of risk, moderate, conservative, aggressive, and they take care of investing it. I guess it is similar to how you invest in a mutual fund.
The returns aren't going to make you rich anytime soon, but they're better than the fraction of a percentage you get from a regular savings account with any bank today.
But now everything is going to the blockchain and crypto, so it was just a matter of time before someone replicated the spare change savings idea into a crypto-based system. RoundlyX just rolled out earlier this year.
RoundlyX buys cryptocurrency with your spare change
Enter RoundlyX. RoundlyX is the same as Acorns in principle, but instead of investing your spare change into mutual funds, or stocks or EFTs, RoundlyX buys crypto for you.
This could be one of the easiest ways to stack sats, without any effort on your part.
The account is pretty easy to set up, there are no complicated steps to create wallets or copy and paste your codes and all of that stuff that often comes with working with the emerging crypto space.
RoundlyX uses Plaid to connect to your bank and immediately starts going through your transactions to grab the "spare change."
Similar to Acorns and other "keep the change" and "save spare change" programs, they have multipliers, so you can accelerate your savings by adding a 2x, 3x, or 10x multiplier. So that if your transaction was $10.35, RoundlyX will take 65 cents, but with a 3x multiplier then the savings will be $1.95.
Once you accumulate $45.00 in your RoundlyX account, RoundlyX will buy the cryptocurrency of your choice in the exchange of your choice, the options include any token or coin traded in some of the big exchanges like Coinbase, Gemini, Binance International, Okcoin, and others.
I've signed up for this now and have it active, I have canceled my Acorns subscription too, there's no sense in paying for that if I'm not going to use it. That's another benefit with RoundlyX, their service is only $1.00/month (the first month is free). Acorns plans start at $3.00/month. There's nothing wrong with Acorns as far as I can tell, and my experience with them has been great. But the future is here and the future is crypto.
If you haven't started using, accumulating, and transacting with cryptocurrencies, this could be the easiest way to dip your toes in the water with minimal risk. Check it out here if you want to join.
A Brief Introduction Video of RoundlyX
Here's an intro video about how you can use them to buy crypto with your spare change.
