Every Monday is Intents and Purchases day at Living Behind the Curve.

Do you remember spaving? It literally means “spending to save”. For a summer in the late 90s, it was sort of this kitschy pop culture injoke that the entire country was having with itself. I even remember Oprah doing something on her show about spaving. (That’s how I know it was the late 90s, because I was class of ‘99, and at no time before or since have I ever been at home with the free time to watch Oprah.) It didn’t last, though. Go ahead - google it. I’ll wait.

The lack of information on the net about spaving gives me a little bit more faith in humanity than I had a few minutes ago. Formal spaving is equal parts conspicuous consumption and New Math. In a nutshell, if you spend enough money the right way on the right bargains, your savings will trend towards 100 percent, determined by any mathematical pablum you can come up with. We agree this is ridiculous, right?

Now google “spend to save credit cards”. Tons of relevant hits flood your screen. Spaving was once a bargain-hunting technique. Now? No bargains required — it’s all done on your credit card. So what’s going on here?

Recently, the US government reported that the national rate of savings is not only negative, but at its lowest point since the Great Depression. There are many good reasons to believe that this number is worthless, but the complexities of this situation don’t make for good media sound bytes, and so we have consumer anxiety over “rates of saving” as a result.

Credit card companies, always willing to “help” when it’s profitable for them, stepped up to the plate and created a variety of cash-back cards that funnel the money directly into high-yield savings accounts. AmEx’s “One” is a good example. With this card, 1% of your purchases are deposited into an adjustable-rate savings account (they currently advertise February’s rate, which is 5%), and you can add more money at any time.

So what does this mean in real money? Using the savings calculator thoughtfully provided by AmEx, let’s assume that you charge (and pay off, right?) $1000 on your credit card every month for one year. 1% of that, or $10, will go into your savings account. After one year, assuming that the interest rate remains constant, you’ll have roughly $123. After 2 years, you’ll have $252, but you also get to pay the yearly card fee of $35, so you’re down to $217. That doesn’t sound like a whole lot of return to me.

If you spend more money, or funnel more of your bills through the card than I would, your numbers will obviously be higher. I may end up with 200 bucks I didn’t have 2 years ago, but a card like this isn’t a solution to my personal savings dilemma. Just like any credit card, the trick is to use it intelligently. 5% interest is really good, and with this account you can put more money in at any time, and I hope you would. As long as access ing the money in this account isn’t a complete pain, you could treat it like any internet high-interest savings account. However, since interest rates have been trending upwards over the past 4 years, it’s really not that difficult to find an account with 5% interest or more that, unlike AmEx, will disclose their current rate and happily give you a very good idea of what their adjustment schedule is. Card bonuses are great, but don’t believe the hype. There’s no magic bullet.