Yotta Savings / Lottery

[sloonan]

Savings account + Lottery = Very cool way to set up emergency fund or holiday savings.

Yotta is a FDIC insured savings acct with no fees that gives you a 0.20% return and is also a prize linked savings account (kinda like a premium bond in the UK)

This means that for every $25 saved you get a recurring ticket for a weekly number draw with a chance to win money (up to a ridiculous amount). Yes, kind of like a lottery but you don't lose the money you put in savings.

I signed up and it's fun. They are fairly new and trying to attract people right now so if you sign up through an affiliate link we'll both get 100 extra tickets. Just sign up with code SCOTT35 or tap this link: https://withyotta.page.link/RjmtWJSfLpj1SH7H8

[scottieb]

There is a local credit union to me that has been doing something like this for a long time. Their deal is for every $25 you put in to your savings account, you get entered into a drawing for $250. They draw for the $250 every month. It's an excellent way to encourage people to store up liquid cash for when it's needed.

[moonweasel]

Funny, they have a similar thing here, at least for a few more months, they are canning it after 50-60 odd years, best I ever had was a bonus $10

[Raleighpaintball.com]

Ehh, this seems fun. I can throw $100 in to start. Let me know if you win anything. Also, if you end up winning $10million from the bonus tickets I gave you, then you have 2 obligations
1. Donate enough money to the MCB site to make sure it does not go down again
2. Hire some super ukranian hackers to hunt down the people who blew up the site the first time and get all their credit card numbers

[Mr. Hick]

So, the only thing that I wanna know is how do you get taxed on your "lottery" winnings?

[sloonan]

My guess since they deposit any winnings into your account, and this is only a guess would be as standard 1099-INT form. But I could be wrong.
But if you win the Tesla you could just give it to me and I'll pay the taxes.

[sloonan]

It would be good if I had just googled it first. Looks like it is taxed if you make more than $600 per year and they send you a 1099-MISC form.

[flyweightnate]

Edit 2: They folded last month. Looks like the fund behind them went insolvent.

Edit: They've changed the structure, and it pays out far less than it used to. A typical high- yield savings is way better now.

Screw it, why not. I signed up and used your code, gonna see what happens. Hard to have too many savings accounts; maybe one will be a Unicorn fund.

NATHAN194 will be the reference your bonus comes from!

[flyweightnate]

To add some math to it: it looks like each ticket has an expected value, per drawing, of about 0.25 cents. So, for every $100, you can expect to get about $0.50 per year. Not great, but not bad. The chance of getting all 7 balls is in the billions, but a $5.8M lump payout would be life changing.

All told, it makes saving exciting.

[flyweightnate]

1.60 the first week. If I can pull 1% a week like this... highly unlikely though!

[Axel]

Usually I'd say you're better off with a money market fund but these days we are back to practically zero interest

[flyweightnate]

This has been an interesting little account. I'm averaging 1.6% per month, which is a lot better than my other accounts! Unsustainable? Maybe. Fun? Yup.

[Siress]

Is the lottery portion of this program audited by an authority of some sort? It's hard for me to shy away from contractually obligated returns.

[flyweightnate]

I'm gonna go with no? The expected return is soooooo low, I doubt they even care, though. Works out to .025% per week, if I remember right. I just happen to be doing around $3 better than that, which is... more than my money market returns?

[Siress]

I'm gonna go with no? The expected return is soooooo low, I doubt they even care, though.

That's what I was guessing. I'm also guessing, then, that they are purposefully gaming the returns to be higher for new accounts to try and trick people into complacency - thus keeping their accounts long term without paying close attention. Then they get less than typical returns. Makes sense, really. The lottery is primarily for those that suffer from gamblers fallacy. People that pay close attention, such as yourself, will just dive out when the free money stops pouring in - but I suspect that's a relatively small percentage of users.

[Killerito]

i suck at saving so hopefully it is hard to withdraw money im in. If I make more than 23 cents in a year it’s a higher payout than my normal account.


also you forgot it’s your birthday so there is a bonus 50 tickets on top of the 100

if yoy want to share the love code skyler16
vulture sounds
lol

[sloonan]

Update:
I'm getting about a 2.55% APY on my acct. I do not expect this to continue but its a lot more then offered in any of the other savings accts out there.
Even if I win nothing else for the rest of the year (very unlikely) and earn just the standard 0.2 APY, I will have made more with this acct then other savings accts I could have opened.
Also, I'm only using this acct to save up sone money for a family Disney trip so not looking at this as a long term investment.

[FirstImpact]

Hmm that sounds rather interesting actually. I did not even know that there is such a feature actually. That is rather great, for each 25 bucks you actually get a weekly number draw, which is really amazing! Besides the fact that you save money, you actually got the opportunity to win even more, that is rather great! Lotteries in general became really popular nowadays, just like any other kind of gambling. I have been playing a lot of slots and poker recently. Mostly I am gambling on sites recommended by yummyspins.com, as they are having some really nice reviews.

[martix_agent]

Where does the money for the winning people come from? Something seems fishy about this. If they're getting it from investing all the money, why wouldn't I just invest my own money, and get a higher percent increase.

[flyweightnate]

Yeah, just risk transferral. Expected value is less than 2%, so they can loan it out at 4-6% pretty easy, but I don't have to take that sort of risk with it.

I just got the itch to put my money elsewhere and pulled it all out (a few thousand bucks), and had turned an annualized rate of return around 2%. Its just a touch more interesting than a money market fund, but with the same underlying economics. Not like there are "losers", there's just a very slim chance of getting much more than 2%. And IIRC, no chance of getting less than 0.5%.

[sloonan]

Google is your friend, https://help.withyotta.com/en/articl...han-most-banks

And this should not replace a solid retirement investment account but you should still have some kind of emergency savings or vacation savings (what I am using it for).