SpringCoin to Pay Off $500 Debt for One Lucky Wise Bread Reader
Editor's Note: This contest is over. Congratulations to Jessica for winning $500! Please check your email Jessica to claim the prize.
SpringCoin (formerly known as DebtEye during beta) is an online debt relief coaching service that helps you get out of debt quickly. Founded by three certified credit counselors, SpringCoin has received many positive reviews. Mashable called it one of the 5 "must try products from Y-Combinator.” New York Times described it as "Mint.com for the indebted." (For those unfamiliar with Y-Combinator, it is responsible for help launching famous companies like Reddit, Dropbox, Loopt, and Scribd).
To celebrate Financial Literacy Month, SpringCoin is helping Wise Bread readers take the first step in getting out of debt with the following giveaways:
- 100% free lifetime SpringCoin account (value of $96 per year) to the first 300 Wise Bread readers who sign up via this link in April. (See the benefits of this service)
- Pay off the credit card debt for one randomly selected Wise Bread reader up to $500.
How to Enter
Complete these 3 easy steps before midnight on April 30th
- Register for a free account at SpringCoin via this link.
- Complete registration of your SpringCoin account so they can start analyzing your spending pattern and give you personalized advice. (The process is quick and their system uses same encryption technology as those used by banks and Mint.com.)
- Leave a short comment below with your thoughts and feedback about SpringCoin.
I tried the registration process last weekend and it only took a few minutes to complete.
Contest Details
- Contest ends Monday, April 30th 11:59 pm Pacific.
- Winners are randomly selected.
- Winners will be announced after April 30th on the original post. Winners will also be contacted via email. Winners have 3 business days to respond. If you do not respond within 3 days we reserve the right to select new winners.
- You must be 18 and US resident to enter. Void where prohibited. No purchase necessary.
SpingCoin Features
How will a free SpringCoin account help you fight debt? With each account you’ll get:
- A detailed analysis of your personal finance, and a customized monthly payment plan just for you.
- A hands-free budgeting tool that provides automatic tracking and categorization of your spending so you’ll know where your money is going.
- Personalized spending insights. Just like how Netflix can figure out what type of movies you like, SpringCoin can tell you a lot about your spending pattern. It can get extremely targeted and say, “It looks like you spent $100 at Old Navy, next time use this 10% off coupon.”
- 24/7 bill alerts and handy payment calendar to remind you of due dates and so you can avoid late fees.
- Earn points for completing weekly quizzes to increase your financial IQ.
- Taking extra steps (like making extra payment on debt) earns you points, which give you a chance to win rewards like gift cards.
While a SpringCoin service package usually costs $96 per year, you’ll be getting this 100% free forever if you sign up now using this link before April 30th.
Tagged: Debt Management, Giveaways
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This is a great service. Simple. Intuitive. My only complaint is, it didn't pull in all of my debts from my credit report.
Hey Matt,
Thanks for the kind words. You can manually enter any type of debt that wasn't pulled from your credit report. Shoot us an email if you run into any problems. Thanks!
Thanks for offering the free membership! It is a really wonderful service and very easy to use. While we do not have a lot of debt, or carry a balance from month to month, there is a lot to learn from using the site.
I have signed up through Wise Bread. It was very easy and quick to do. I'm looking forward to seeing how this works. Thanks!
Thanks for connecting us to this free resource!
I'm really excited about trying this...it looks like exactly what I need to help me get rid of credit card debt and manage my student loans.
There is no way in Spring Coin to get debt cut in half by paying it all in full, etc.
Easy set up so far. My payment plan isn't aggressive enough.
I like how SpringCoin gives you the option to merge your bank info. I tried this on another site and didn't like it, but hopefully with the breakdown of my debt staring me in the face, I can make more progress so that I can finally be debt free!!! This debt is killing me!
Easy to setup, will see how it works.
So far, just from playing around for a few minutes (without getting heavily involved) I would say that I LOVE that it auto-imported everything and immediately gave an up to date debt analysis! I've been ignoring Mint.com lately just because its starting to feel cumbersome; so perhaps I've got a new finance site!! :)
:)
Hi Rachel,
I'm glad to hear that you had a chance to play around with it. We love hearing feedback from all our users, so if there's anything you'd like to see in the future feel free to shoot us an email!
So far so good!
I signed up, so thanks for the link. I'm actively trying to pay off my student loans and car loan, but that didn't auto populate. Hopefully there's a way to do that manually.
Thanks for checking us out! This is a really good point, and I'll make sure I put this on the list of features to roll out soon! We have some student loan providers that you can link manually under the "Bills" section to track it, but of course it depends on who your provider is.
Thank you for keeping Us abreast of freebies and giveways. Since pricesof everythinf latelt has been On the rise
It looks good so far. Very clean interface.
I have just joined. I'm at work, or I would have filled them in on all of my debts. I think this sounds fascinating though.
Hi Katherine,
You can always go back and complete the registration at another time, so no worries! Let us know if you need any help completing it or retrieving your password, thanks for checking us out!
Looks easy to use, can't wait to get started. Hopefully this can help us:)
I'm really looking forward to using this. Being toted as "Mint.com for the indebted" made signing up an easy decision. Thanks for making this available and bringing it to our attention.
Thanks for the free membership! I signed up and it immediately found and linked all my credit cards. This didn't actually help me since my credit cards are paid off in full every month so I don't consider them debt that I have to pay off monthly. I manually added my student loans because I wanted to have an idea of how long that would take me to pay off. But when I decided to manually input the amount I want to pay every month, they wouldn't let me make a payment any lower than $600.
This didn't help because right now, the payment plan I'm on only has me paying $435 a month. I wanted to see the difference between if I paid $435 vs $600 every month in terms of how long it would take me to pay off the loan but I wasn't able to see that.
I stopped playing around with it after that. I can see how this can definitely be useful but my interested waned a bit after these first steps. I'll play around with it again though to see how I can use it.
I noticed that you can gain points for doing certain things on the website. Is there a place to see the points you collect each month?
Current qualms: It recognized my checking and savings but not the overdraft line for my bank. I couldn't change incorrect due dates. Does it calculate the due date and payment amount based on previous payments?
Thanks for the chance to free subscription. I'm happy to see how this all works out. I'm enjoying the blog!
Hi April,
For now, the points you earn every week will be entered into a cash raffle. The next raffle will take place this Friday!
It should have picked up your overdraft line for your bank. You should be able to link your bills (just like you linked your checking accounts) to have the most accurate due date. We're actually pushing out some changes in the next 48 hours to allow you to modify your due dates. If you want to send me a quick email, I'll be sure to keep you in the loop. You can reach me at: kevin.yu[a][t]springcoin.com
Thanks again for your awesome feedback!
Wow, this is amazing! Thanks for the link so that we can keep this service forever! I love how it simplifies everything! I have a lot of debt I need to pay off, and I need all the help I can get! Thanks again!
They ask for your social security number. It is not smart to give that out to someone over the internet.
Hi Chad, did they ask for your whole social security number? I tested out the program myself last weekend, and it asked for the last 4 digits instead of the whole number.
Hi Chad,
We only ask for the last 4 digits of your SSN and we use this information to get a birds eye view of all your accounts so we can create a roadmap for you. We use bank level security to make sure your information is safe and secure. If you have any security related question, please don't hesitate to reach out to me :)
I've actually gained a significant amount of insight from using the site on and off for one day so far. In fact, the site suggests an amount I'd have to pay every month to get rid of most of my debts within the next year...advice I plan to heed in order to reach financial freedom much much sooner than I originally expected. The site didn't automatically accumulate all the debts from my credit report but entering them manually was still pretty easy. All in all, I think it's going to be valuable to use SpringCoin.
Gosh, I'd kind of like to merge it with Mint. Mint is great for small-scale things. Seeing where your money goes, how much you spend on coffee. But I feel like it's bad at giving you the big picture. Springcoin seems to be the exact opposite. But I'll continue experimenting and see where I land.
I'm a little surprised to see Wise Bread essentially recommending giving your financial info without explaining how the site has been vetted or why readers should trust it - Kevin, I've seen your comments and I don't mean to imply that you're not trustworthy, I just mean that this post is out of line with what I usually expect from Wise Bread.
Hi Kasey,
I apologize if I wasn't more clear about why I trust this service enough to offer free accounts to our users. As I mentioned in the first paragraph, this service is a Y-Combinator project. Y-Combinator is a startup incubator founded by Paul Graham, and is responsible for nurturing famous startups like Reddit, Dropbox, Loopt, and Scribd. To be part of Y-Combinator is quite an honor and a sign that your startup is a good idea.
To top it off, out of all the recent Y-Combinator projects, Mashable picked it as one of the top ones to keep an eye on, which makes it an even more promising startup. It also received a review from New York Time's Bucks blog.
We've also worked with SpringCoin before. A few weeks ago they sponsored a TweetChat on Wise Bread.
Finally, I signed up for the program myself to test out the system. And everything looks good so far.
They use a secured https connection and has a current Verisign security certificate. So I think you are as safe using SpringCoin as you are with services like your bank's online banking or Mint.com.
I hope that answers your question! It is my fault for not explaining this in more detail. I'll add more of this info in the post so people get a better idea. Thanks for the suggestion.
Edited to add: Also the backend financial data is handled through a service called Yodlee, which is pretty much the industry standard for handling online financial data. You can read more about Yodlee here. I believe Adaptu and Mint (before they joined Intuit) both used Yodlee in their backend technology.
I think that this site is great and reminds me of mint.com
SpringCoin was really easy to join. Really impressed so far with the features. Thanks for the tip.
This doesn't seem intuitive at all, so far. Also, it doesn't recognize my bank as one of its options; silly me for staying with my small local bank. Entering things manually is awkward, and I can't add my car loan with Ford, which is one of my largest debts. I'm willing to give it a week or two, though.
Looks like a great tool - it couldn't pull my debt information from my credit report, but I am exited to see what features it offers
So far it looks pretty neat, but I wish that there was a way to put a higher payment in sometimes... I guess time will tell how useful it is in comparison to Mint's goals. Nice interface though.
Thank You
spring Coin and Wisebread. Not only was it very easy to make account and add my existing accounts even oens that it didn't import. But let's hope this great giveaway will allow many people to get a new plan in action to manaage their debt and get control of their life again.
I can't seem to add a creditor!
The registration process was very easy. The program itself still confuses me a little, and I need to figure out how to import my husbands data, because my name isn't on that card and it's closed. Very cool concept though. Thank you!
Hey Abby,
Thanks for checking us out. Feel free to shoot me an email and I'll make sure we get this taken care of!
I'm in the phase of my life where I'm digging my way out of debt, so any planning help and visual progress indicator works great to keep my motivation up. I signed up for SpringCoin, and completed my account. After running into a couple of snags with some accounts I emailed Kevin and he and his team were quick with fixes and suggestions. This is a great service! I'm looking forward to watching it grow as my debt shrinks.
Just joined and it seems great. I, too, wish I could merge it with my Mint account. But, I'm always appreciative of new tools! Thank you!
Hey Natalie,
That's great to hear! Hope you find it useful and be on the look out for new features coming up soon!
Very user friendly, easy to navigate
I signed up for SpringCoin and so far I'm impressed. I look forward to using it as a resource to keep track of bills and debt.
I signed up and thought the website still needs some work after spending close to 15-20 minutes poking around. Yes, the sign-up was easy, but the rest of it? I could do without. I couldn't add any of my student loans from lenders like Sallie Mae or the Dept. of Education. It didn't find all my bills even after I searched for them. My auto loan through Mazda wasn't available. I also pay my credit cards in full every month. There should be an option to show that via a check-the-box-to-opt-in.
What the site does, I do it all now on my own and it's actually easier to do it on my own (set up a recurring event on Google calendar to remind me when bills are due and I already automated 90% of my payments - extra payments are decided on a month-by-month basis). Maybe it's because I'm an organized person. The site wasn't easy to understand - no FAQ section? Really? No "How to" section? There's no way for me to manually input a debt and I'm not talking about manually searching for them.
Overall, I find the site a little lacking compared to other finance/debt sites. I used to use Mint.com, but I dropped that in favor of the envelope budgeting system - eebacanhelp.com. As for rewards, I use Saveup.com. I guess it can help those who are just starting the debt repayment process, but it's not for more advance users or those who want a more robust and customizable application/experience. Maybe if some of these issues and updates were in place I'll try it again, but for now, I'll stick to my methods and tried-and-true sites. Just my thoughts.
I did sign up but find the automatic budgeting to pay off small amounts like a credit card over the period of multiple months annoying. We always pay off all bills in full each month. I see the benefit for someone who doesn't have a handle on their bills and expenses, but I have yet to see the usefulness in this - I will have to explore further.
I like the idea of the budget Spring Coin created to assist me.
Looks good, I like the layout. Couldn't import my car payments though. Nice service. Thanks!
I plan on using SpringCoin in conjunction with another program to get out of my credit card debt I built up during college.
Easy to join - and it looks interesting to use. The only debt I have right now is student loans, so I'll have to manually add those tonight and see where we go from there....
Thanks for the free signup!
Thanks WiseBread! This will be especially useful in organizing all of my bills in one place. I have to echo the other users in that the site is user-friendly and I'm looking forward to the service.
Just joined SpringCoin and set up my plan, thanks for the free membership offer. I'm still figuring it out but so far it looks useful. I like the calendar feature that shows the upcoming payments.
What about readers who are debt free?? Will you give me the prize in cash?
I've added the accout it was easy to set up and I was shocked at how fast it imported my information, plus it gives you a great way to budget. The site will also tell you how long it will take to pay off debts along with factoring in bills that you already have plus your monthly income. I could use the 500, but the fact that it lays everything out for you is a definite plus.
Wow, they really analyzed my information quickly
Looks okay so far. Looking forward to see how it works. Thanks.
This is very interesting, but it pulled in old debts that I had already paid off. The payments look manageable.
Sign up was easy. Looks like a useful service.
I've been waiting for a site like this to help me manage my debt and finances! I have the bad habit of "compartmentalizing" my various debts instead of facing them realistically as a group, and now I feel like I'm on the path to getting things under control. I really need SpringCoin's monthly payment suggestions and financial IQ boosters, and the extra savings tips and coupons are a big additional help. So far the site seems secure and user-friendly, and I plan to use it regularly going forward. Thanks!
Didn't pull all of my debts but site is very user-friendly.
I signed up. As promised, it was easy. Springcoin appears to be a great service, easy to use so far. It looks like there is a full range of useful tools available. I use Quicken at home though and I feel like I am already doing most of this.
This seems really interesting and a helpful way to budget my expenses.
I know that I need this site, but it is intimidating to get started!