My honey and I have been banking at U.S. Bank for about 7 years now, not because of superior interest rates or anything like that. Mostly it’s about convenience and the people who work at my most frequented branch are just fabulous. Anyway, a little over a year ago we were both inside the bank when something caught my fancy.

A new savings program where they reward you for reaching your saving goals. H*ll yeah, I thought. After looking into it, I gave it a try. I opened up a separate personal checking and savings account with their S.T.A.R.T. program and put $50 into each account ($100 total).

Then, about a week later, I added $950 to the savings account. We already had that money in our ING savings account and I knew this would net more than the interest we would have earned. A couple weeks later and I had a shiny $50 Visa card. Awesome! Then, 12 months later I got another one.

How it Works:

You need a U.S. Bank checking account and savings account and just tell them you want to enroll in their S.T.A.R.T. program. Then you need to choose 1 or more of the following to initiate savings:

#1 Set up an automatic transfer from your checking to your savings (I did $5 a month). You can choose the day or days and the amounts. It doesn’t have to be a lot, they never had a problem with my $5 per month transfer.

#2 Choose an amount to be transferred to your savings for each check card purchase. You can choose from 25¢ to $5 for each use.

#3 Choose an amount to be transferred to your savings for each credit card purchase. Same as the other, between 25¢ to $5 for each use.

Once your savings account reaches $1,000 they will send you a $50 Visa card for reaching your 1st goal. Then, if you leave that full $1,000 in your savings for 12 more months (without the balance ever going below $1,000), they’ll send you one more $50 Visa card for reaching your 2nd goal. Easy peasy, especially if you already have some money saved up. It’s really worth checking into.

Eventually, I ended up adding the S.T.A.R.T. program to our joint checking account and have already received the $50 card (we used it here) for reaching our 1st goal. Now we’re onto our next goal which will give us another one in March 2012.

Of course we won’t leave the money in there after we reach Goal 2, we’ll transfer it over to our ING account so we can earn some real interest. Sorry U.S. Bank your S.T.A.R.T. program is kick-a$$ but your interest sucks a$$.

Has anybody else tried out the S.T.A.R.T. program at U.S. Bank?