Can you save money by spending? Not really, despite the hype.(MONEY)

SAVING MONEY IS TOUGH for many people, so bank programs designed to help you save every time you spend can be tempting. Under those plans, money is deposited into your savings or money-market account when you make purchases with a debit or credit card. But saving money by spending it is as unprofitable as it sounds. The Consumer Reports Money Lab, which crunched the numbers, shows why:

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Bank of America's Keep the Change

The details. You set up a savings or money-market account and link it to a checking account with a debit card. With each purchase that you make with the card, the bank rounds the amount up to the nearest dollar and transfers the difference to your savings account. If you spend $332.49, for example, Bank of America will transfer 51 cents from checking to savings.

The bank also matches the transfer amount at 100 percent for the first three months and at 5 percent thereafter, up to $250 a year, which is taxable. Assuming the average transaction is 50 cents, you'd have to make 1,728 debit purchases in the first year to get the full $250, according to Bank of America's online calculator. But because the amount matched drops, you'd have to make 10,000 transactions in the second year to get the $250.

The basic savings account recently paid a paltry 0.20 percent interest, and the money-market account paid 1.75 percent on deposits of less than $5,000, at a time when many online savings accounts were paying more than 3 percent. And if an automatic transfer results in an overdraft, you'll be socked with a $25 fee unless you sign up for overdraft protection, in which case you'd be charged $10 each time.

Bottom line. You'll do better saving in accounts that pay more interest.