“Save up and pay for it” is a phrase that we very rarely hear in our debt-driven society. One company, SmartyPig, has taken it on themselves to step into that gap  and encourage people to only buy the things that they can save up for and actually afford to purchase.

SmartyPig can be best described as the Web 2.0 version of a savings bank. The company offers high-yield savings account offering above market interest rates (currently, the bank is offering a 2.01% APY rate), but it also offers you tools to develop a savings plan and encourages you to save for specific goals.

There are all sorts of build in widgets and graphs to track your savings process. You can also make your savings social by making your goals visible to the public, allowing friends, family, and random people online to track and root for your progress. They can even contribute to your savings goal if you would like.

The funds that you save with SmartyPig are FDIC insured and deposited into West Bank, which has been in Des Moines, IA since 1893.

If you decide that you need your cash and want to stop saving up with SmartyPig, you can close your goal and “break the piggy bank.” You’ll then be able to withdraw or transfer the money back to your checking account.

SmartyPig isn’t a standard put-money-in and take-money-out savings account. If you’re looking for something with built-in restrictions and tools that will force and help you to save for specific purchasing goals, SmartyPig might be for you.

If you’ve made a new years resolution and are hoping to save more money this year, there’s a website that you need to know about—SmartyPig.com

SmartyPig.com provides a new variation on the idea of an online savings account. All savings accounts give you a place to put your money, but none of you to actually make use of your savings account and put money away. Just like an un-used treadmill won’t help you lose weight, an unused savings account will never help you build a nest egg. SmartyPig.com understands the psychology of savings and have developed a savings account that will encourage you to save.

SmartyPig.com helps you save by encouraging you to establish specific savings goals and then helps you develop an automatic savings plan that will help you meet our plan. SmartyPig.com will tell you how much money you need to put away each month to meet your goal by a specific date. The service will also setup an automatic transfer so that the amount of money you need to save each month is transferred from your checking account automatically to your SmartyPig.com savings account each month.

SmartyPig’s savings account also encourages you to save by offering you two great rewards. The first of which is the interest rate that the account offers. SmartyPig has consistently offered one of the best interest rates on savings in the Untied States for the last several years. SmartyPig also allows you to redeem their nest-egg in the form of gift-cards, giving you up to a 12% bonus on your funds depending on the retailer.

Over the next couple of years, banks will continue to decrease their lending activities as they face pressure to increase their capital levels. This and other coming regulations will make it more difficult to borrow money for major purchases via unsecured loans. This means that consumers will need to start saving up for major purchases instead of simply taking out a loan to make a purchase. SmartyPig.com is a service that will help you save up for major purchases and reward you for doing so.

Most offers of online savings accounts are very similar to what you would get from your local bank, with the notable exception of a slightly higher interest rate. Although these products have provided customers with better rates, they have not done much to innovate the idea of an online savings account.

SmartyPig’s savings account is a departure from other online savings offerings. Instead of simply providing a place to put money, SmartyPig encourages its depositors to develop savings goals for major purchases and then helps them develop automatic savings plans to meet those savings goals. The SmartyPig Savings Account provides the same great interest rates that online savings accounts offer, but it offers a bit of psychological encouragement to save that other online banks simply don’t.

When you first create a SmartyPig savings account, you will be immediately asked what your savings goals. You’ll pick out a dollar amount for a specific purchase or goal and then SmartyPig will help you determine when you can meet that goal and show you how much you’ll have to save each month to meet that goal by the date you desire.

SmartyPig will then setup a savings plan to automatically put money aside from your checking account each month. Using an automatic savings plan like the SmartyPig account is a great way to force yourself to be disciplined if you find yourself having trouble building up savings. Since the money is taken out each month automatically, you don’t have to force yourself to save.

SmartyPig’s savings account does an excellent job of encouraging its users to save by helping them establish meaningful savings goals and setting up automatic savings plans, but it also helps consumers save money when they are ready to make a major purchase. Let’s say that you saved up $1,000 for a big-screen television. If you were to take the $1,000 in your account and redeem it for an Overstock.com gift card to use to buy your television, your $1,000 would turn into $1,070 with the 7% discount that Overstock.com provides to SmartyPig users. SmartyPig also provides consumers the option of withdrawing their funds via electronic transfer or via a prepaid debit card.

SmartyPig’s savings account provides welcome innovation to the world of online savings while offering a great interest rate. While there’s room for improvement, SmartyPig has done an excellent job of rethinking the online savings account.