We asked three Servus members to try out our new digital savings tools, Top-Up Savings and MyGoals, and let us know how these tools are helping them reach their savings goals. Here's what they said.

Aimée

Aimée is in her mid-thirties and is preparing to take leave from her marketing job as she welcomes baby number two this fall.

Savings goal #1: maintain an emergency fund

When we first decided to start a family, we also decided we better start saving up – kids are far from free! Knowing I'd be taking a year off work, we chose to set up a "maternity leave" savings account. Every two weeks when I got paid I transferred a sum of cash into this account. With some discipline, we were able to save up a nice nest egg for my leave. Fast forward to today and I'm excited to automate this process with Servus MyGoals now that baby number two is on the way. I'm confident as a sleep-deprived new parent I won't always remember to transfer funds multiple times a month. I also liked the idea of making it a fixed sum that comes out on paydays because I never even miss the money. Once I'm officially on maternity leave, I'll reduce the amount of each transfer, but hopefully will still be able to contribute a little bit to our emergency fund.

Savings goal #2: family get-away

My husband and I recently completed a renovation on an older home, so lately all of our funds have been going to repaying our Home Equity Line of Credit. Eventually, we'd like to afford to take our kids on a vacation somewhere warm. Since we have time to save, I set up my Servus Member Card in Top-Up Savings and now I'm consistently contributing to our vacation fund. Adding a little extra to each purchase we make (and there's been a lot of them lately) is an easy way for us to save a little bit at a time. When we finally book our trip, we'll probably use our World Elite Mastercard® to purchase flights and accommodations (we love that it gives us points and offers protection with insurance). Then we can quickly pay it off with the balance in our Top-Up Savings account! 

Daniella

Daniella, in her mid-twenties, is working towards completing a master's degree while also maintaining her full-time job.

Savings goal #1: graduate debt-free

I knew the minute I received my grad school acceptance letter that I would have to dramatically change my lifestyle. Between tuition, textbooks and all the expenses associated with a three-week residency in Victoria each year, I knew I would have to make some changes to take on the lowest amount of debt possible. This meant I would have to be more careful about patio drinks with friends, shopping trips and my almost-daily Starbucks run—sacrilege! The nice part about Servus MyGoals is that the money automatically transfers to my "School" savings account. This way I don't see the money in my chequing account and rationalize buying that new makeup palette I've had my eye on. Then, when I see the amount I'm spending on textbooks each semester, I don't panic— I know I've saved money in my account, without having to remember to transfer it every month.

Savings goal #2: celebration vacation

It's easy to lose sight of the light at the end of the tunnel when you're only a few months into a Master's Degree. The stress of seemingly endless hours of reading, writing and research take a toll. Having something to look forward to will help get me through the next two years, so I've decided to take a trip to Europe in 2021 as a graduation present to myself. This is where Top-Up savings comes in. Every purchase I make rounds up to the amount I set, and the extra amount automatically transfers into my "Europe" savings account. Every purchase I make rounds to an even number, so my OCD is happy, and I am happy knowing that in two years I will be lying on a beach in Greece celebrating the completion of grad school. Win-win.

Lauren

Lauren is in her early thirties and recently relocated to a new city where she started a new job in communications.

Savings goal #1: replenish emergency savings

In the past year I got married, moved to a new city, bought a house and changed jobs – it's been expensive to say the least. Then, when our first property tax bill came in the mail, the total caught us off guard because it was significantly more than we expected. Luckily, we had some funds in emergency savings that we used to cover the extra cost we hadn't planned on, but now we want to replace that cash in our account as soon as possible. To prevent myself from spending my money elsewhere (*cough* on shoes), I created a digital emergency savings goal that automatically moves money once a month into our emergency fund. We're on track to have it built back up by the end of the year.

Savings goal #2: dream renovation

The house we bought was in our dream location, but it's far from a dream on the interior. There's a list of renovation projects we'd like to tackle and luckily we've been able to agree on an order of priority and an estimated budget for each item. To get started saving the money we need, I enrolled in Top-Up Savings so that every time I make a purchase using my Member Card (which is often), I'll be making progress towards our goal. Since the projects on our list are mostly cosmetic, we aren't on a tight timeline to have the funds in place. We also agreed to make lump sum contributions to our "reno" savings whenever we come into extra cash to keep the momentum going.