XP: Tell Me about...

ErikandAfton

About your high yielding/high interest saving accounts. I want to open a new one that yields more than our current one with our bank. I'm considering a CD too, but it would have to be as short as 6 months as we plan on using part of this money on things for our new home that we hope to purchase before the end of next summer.

E and I were given a very wonderful Christmas gift( which I am calling the Christmas Blessing because its too amazing to call it a gift) by his grandfather. We will be able to pay all our debts( minus student loans) and my car off and have a nice nest egg, but I would love to be able to put it in an account that it will make money off of itself until we need it. 

Rock-n-Voll

There really aren't many (if any) high-yield savings accounts these days.  Even the online banks are only paying something in the area of 1.1% right now.  Still better than traditional b&m banks, but far from their 5-6% days.  If you want to go that route, I'd look at ING, HSBCDirect, FNBODirect, and any number of other online bank options (even traditional institutions like Chase have online savings accounts now).  We went with HSBC because they're the only ones we found that also offers a linked checking account so we could easily move money between the two.  Their account setup process can be tedious though.

Here is one site with some consolidated rate info, but check for accuracy on the individual provider's site itself: http://www.savingsaccounts.com/

 

ErikandAfton

Rock-n-Voll:

There really aren't many (if any) high-yield savings accounts these days.  Even the online banks are only paying something in the area of 1.1% right now.  Still better than traditional b&m banks, but far from their 5-6% days.  If you want to go that route, I'd look at ING, HSBCDirect, FNBODirect, and any number of other online bank options (even traditional institutions like Chase have online savings accounts now).  We went with HSBC because they're the only ones we found that also offers a linked checking account so we could easily move money between the two.  Their account setup process can be tedious though.

Here is one site with some consolidated rate info, but check for accuracy on the individual provider's site itself: http://www.savingsaccounts.com/

 

Thank you. 

cheryl2006

We have accounts at two banks. One at ING and one in Emigrant. The nice thing about ING is that you can have multiple savings accounts under one account. We like that because we're trying to save for multiple things at a time (e-fund, travel, new car, etc) and want to keep the money separate.

Like Rock-n-Voll said, the interest isn't nearly as high as it used to be. When we opened our Emigrant account in 2006 we were getting around 4.5%. I think now it's around one. It's still better than b&m banks. If we had short term goals like you do, I think we'd consider a CD. 

Passanie

A CD might be an option. Dh had a bunch of his savings in a CD and we actually had to pay penalties to get to it for our down payment. But... they weren't that bad. They only took some of the interest. If we were smarter, we would have put it in a more short-term CD.