The apps that make saving money a game. What's going on, I'm rich tomorrow. This is rich on Tech. Saving money isn't always easy. That's why there's a whole bunch of new apps that make savings fun. Basically, they turn saving money into a game. Let's take a look at three of them. First up is Blast. This is a new app from the founder of the popular savings app Acorns, which rounds up your purchases and then saves the difference.
The new app lets you earn little bits of cash by playing the games you already love, like Candy Crush and Words with Friends, basically any game available on Google Play. We talked to Walter Cruttendon, CEO of Blast.
It just makes savings fun versus right now, savings is kind of boring and difficult, and yet there's two point six billion gamers, So if we can get some of them to save, then we're helping the world a little bit.
So to make it work, you set triggers with your favorite games based on how long you play or accomplishing in game achievements. There's also a leader board where you're competing against other Blast savers. This gives you chances to win extra cash weekly, and no doubt it encourages you to keep using the app.
So what we're trying to do is add an even better outcome. Yes, games do teach you things like iye hand coordination and time management skills and resource allocation skills that they're finding all these benefits to it. But if you can even save money in addition to it, that's the message we'd like to get across. Because if you start early saving money, you don't have to save much every day for it to be a large.
A bound in the future.
Blast is free, there are no fees, and your money saved earns one percent interest. You do have to link your bank account eventually to get your earnings. Average users are earning up to a dollar a day. Next up is an app called Long Game Savings. This is an app that rewards you with virtual coins when you save money, so the money you save is always safe, it's always there, it never goes away. But you can use the coins that you earn to win even more money playing fun
little games inspired by things like slots and scratchers. You can win up to a million dollars playing these games. Prizes are awarded in cash or cryptocurrency. There are no fees to join or play, plus you earn one percent interest on your money that you save. So how does Long Game make money? Well, the company says it gets a referral fee every time someone opens up a new savings account. They keep some of this money and use the rest for prizes and operations. Long Game is available
on iOS and Android. Finally, a new app called Grand just launched in the App Store. Every dollar you save gets you an entry in a weekly contest. These contests give away cash prizes that can range from a few dollars up to thousands of dollars. One thousand winners are announced every Friday at two pm Eastern. We talked to Matt Cohen, CEO of Grand.
I think it's pretty udisputable that people stink its saving. So seventy percent of the country has less than one thousand dollars saved. So it turns out savings really boring and not fun at all. There's no immediate gratification to it, and you know you have to wait a long time to see the payoff. So we thought it might be interesting to make savings feel more like spending, and when people are spending, kind of in pursuit of large prizes. It turns out they end up changing their behavior.
Grand is a plan on something called prize linked savings, which is popular in Asia and Europe.
There's an interesting proxy in the UK called Free Postcode Lottery where people just kind of sign up for a chance to win daily cash and on a savings basis. There's something called premium bonds and forty percent of the UK saves that way, where they forego interest in pursuit of monthly prizes between twenty five pounds and a million pounds.
And we think there's no way we can't be that ubiquitous platform in the US giving very large prizes away and kind of helping a lot of people in the process.
Grand pays one percent on your savings. With them, you can withdraw your money at any time. The big difference here is that the app does charge it tow dollar monthly fee for your savings account. So bottom line, are these apps worth it? Perhaps if they motivate you to save more money than you usually would. The chance of winning some extra cash is also kind of nice, but you could earn more interest in a standard high yield
online savings account. According to nerdwallet, some of the top accounts are paying one point eight five percent interest on your savings with no fees at all. So the way I see it, you're sort of paying point eight five percent interest on your money in order to perhaps win some more money. So really it comes down to your goals and whether these apps will help you meet them. If you want links to all these money saving apps, you can go to my website. It is richon tech
dot tv. I'm Rich Damiro. Thanks so much for listening. I'll talk to you real soon