Mango Money

lbonga1

Has anyone heard about it or use it? It's a prepaid debit card, but you can add a savings account that gives you 6% APY up to $5000 if you do a direct deposit of $500 monthly. There's a monthly fee of $3 for the debit card but no fee for the savings account. I'm thinking it would be a good place to put our emergency fund. I could just keep doing $500 direct deposits to keep the 6%, then transfer any extra above the $5000 to a different account (the rate drops to 0.1% over $5000 so it'd be better kept in my high interest savings account). We'll set FI up with one too so we can have up to $10,000 total earning that rate.

simplyelise

Never heard of it and my immediate reaction is suspicion. But the reviews are fine and it's recommended on various money blogs. Seems like they market mostly towards underbanked communities, so they likely don't have a high percentage of accounts that are getting 6% on a full 5k. Definitely have to watch out on fees, because it looks like you might pay $5 a month if you don't direct deposit at least $500 and on top of that you would drop down to 2% APR. So you do need to stay on top of things to get the full benefit.

We just have our efund in our local bank savings account (only 2k right now while in debt payoff mode), but it's going to take quite a bit of convincing for me to get DH on board with moving to a money market or high-interest online savings account once we are focusing on getting it up to 6 months expenses. I had an ING savings account with a couple thousand in it back when I was 18/19 in 2007/8 and it was getting around 4% at first. Then it slid all the way down to make it not even worth the hassle. But it was awesome while it lasted.

Our savings account currently gets .02% APY LOLOLOL. DH's mom has always worked at a regional bank and he just gets extremely nervous the idea of not using a brick & mortar location. Meanwhile I handle 99% of my bank transactions online or at the atm. I've only driven through the teller about 3 times ever. I love online banking. I'm hoping to convince him to at least put most of the efund in something with a bit higher yield and then keep a couple thousand in brick & mortar savings. I just don't think I can stomach putting leaving 15k at .02%. Thankfully still have another 10 months of debt payoff before we start focusing on efund.

MommyLiberty5013

Is it FDIC insured?

simplyelise

MommyLiberty5013 said:

Is it FDIC insured?

Yes. Although they don't really advertise that as broadly as one might expect. But they are backed by:  Sunrise Banks, N.A., St. Paul, MN 55103, Member FDIC. And all savings and debit accounts are FDIC insured.

lbonga1

@simplyelise My FI isn't comfortable leaving his money in any kind of bank; I have no idea why. He just says he'd rather have the cash with him. Luckily he lets me handle all the finances because that would be getting us nowhere. In your case, .02% is almost like why bother? It kind of makes me stabby that most savings accounts don't even have high enough interest to keep up with inflation.