It doesn’t make cents

So, there’s this new Bank of America “Keep the Change” thing they keep advertising on the radio and TV. If there were ever a case of bad math, this would be it. They promise to relieve you of lost change by rounding your credit card transactions up to the nearest dollar. First off: unless you ask for cash back, you don’t get change from a credit card transaction. The merchants can specify cents, and DO. Then, they tell you of all the money you can “save” by doing this, as if that money would otherwise be lost. That’s misleading: Your total money stays the same. You are “Saving” in the sense that your money is in your savings account, rather than more readily spendable, but you’re not “Saving” in the sense that you’re spending less money. It’s stupid, and misleading, and had they advertised it as what it is (A spending control mechanism), rather than what it isn’t (A way to get extra money), it would have been much less offensive to those with a simple sense of math.

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