I'm Saving up For ...

I'm saving up for a new kitchen stove and I'm giddy as a schoolboy about it.

I was actually on consumerreports.orglast night comparing ratings and getting animated. "Honey, check out the convection oven!" I was torn over the GE and Amana models. My wife, Rhonda, looked at me like I was insane. I displayed excitement usually reserved for sports involving my children or open-wheel racing.

For the last few months, I've been using smartypig.com to save up for a stove. Our current stove works, but it's a piece of crap. The oven handle is long gone, broken off by my oldest who thought she could do a gymnastics routine on it. The oven is a solid 50 degrees hotter than the setting.

If you're my age (44), you can probably remember "saving up" for something in advance. I'd fill my cocker spaniel-shaped bank (cocker bank?)  until the I had enough to buy the baseball or game or whatever. Then I'd mount up the single-speed bike with the banana seat and race down to Jensen's Hardware Store on main street Lake Park, Iowa, where I'd pay for Mr. Jensen for something with nickels and dimes. What a rush.

That's the basis of the very cool SmartyPig.com. It's a 21st-century, online, interest-bearing piggy bank with a couple of twists. Check it out. All you do is enter how much you want to save total, the number of months you want to save, and the site calculates the per-month contribution you make to get there. Then you connect Smarty Pig with your bank account and it sucks out monthly payments automatically. For me, every month $67 goes from my checking account to my online pig account. In 12 months I've paid for my new stove, plus some attractive interest from my online pig account.

There's extreme security. It's exactly like having an online savings account in that regard. You have full control of the cash at all times. When you reach your goal, you can choose to get your money in a retailer gift card (say, Sears for example) and the retailer will usually add a few percent to the total as a bonus. Or you can get it a generic Smarty Pig card or in a check, whatever you dig.

PLUS, you can make your savings goal public so other people can contribute. People use this for family trips, graduation gifts, wedding gifts, church/school organizations who are raising money for trips, etc. It's a feature that's unique to Smarty Pig.

One more bonus: I thought of the name. Boo-yeah! True story! I worked with my homey Mike Ferrari (no relation to the car), founder of the pig, way back in the day and came up with the name, Smarty Pig. It's smart. It's like the piggy bank you used to save up for stuff as a kid. Smarty pants! Smarty Pig. My claim to fame. I got paid for my brainstorm and have no connection or affiliation with Smarty Pig now, other than having an account there and thinking I'm hot stuff for thinking of the name.

I'm proud to say Smarty Pig is bucking the trend of "get it now, pay for it later" America. David Brooks of the New York Times represents on that issue today. He argues -- correctly, in my view -- that American culture massively encourages indebtedness. Whereas back in the day thrift and saving were revered, today American culture encourages debt and living way beyond your means. Keep up with the Jones. Get that boat and support the economy.

Get it now, worry about paying for it later. Put it on the card! The entire economy depends upon "consumer spending." It's become almost patriotic to spend like a drunken sailor. Today debt management skills are more celebrated than the ability to save.

I HATE debt. I'm fiscally conservative. I'm not against spending money by any means, but I am against spending money you don't have. I'm Mr. Pay As You Go. Yet I have debt like everyone else. My current goal is to eliminate all debt except my home mortgage. Including cars purchases. I'm trying to create a savings account I can borrow from to make the big-ticket buys, and then pay that fund back rather than some bank.

When you use patience and build your savings a bit at a time using things like SmartyPig.com, you can buy things with cash on the barrel head. If you want to triple your enjoyment of most anything you can buy, buy it without going into debt. Guarantee you'll enjoy it more. Because you get the benefit of the goods and services without the pain and lament of debt. Huge.

Join the counter-debt-culture movement. Save up for stuff. Get over to SmartyPig.com and give it a look.