Archive for the ‘Tips’ Category
$25 ING Direct Referral Promotion
One of the best features of ING Direct’s Orange Savings Account is the referral bonus. All it takes is for an existing customer to send you an email through their system, you sign up, deposit at least $250, and you get a $25 referral bonus. Your friend get $10 for their trouble. Everyone wins!
It’s a great way to cut your teeth on high yield online savings accounts as ING Direct is one of the oldest banks around (ING is a Dutch company, they bought the great Barings Bank when it went under. Barings funded the Napoleonic Wars and was the Queen of England’s bank!) and they are here to stay (even if they aren’t, your deposits are FDIC insured).
If you don’t know anyone with an ING account or you don’t want to wait, you can get a list of links for $25 ING Direct Referrals here.
Bank Features Matter
It’s easy to let the interest rate of a high yield savings account dominate the conversation but the features of a particular bank matter as well. Is it easy to open sub-accounts? What about other ancillary products that you might want like CDs or mortgages? When the difference between interest rates is so small, and we shouldn’t chase rates, the features that decide which bank is best will dominate.
Here’s an interesting discussion of what features to look for the best bank for you.
Don’t Chase High Interest Rates
The Federal Reserve is likely to increase interest rates in these next few FOMC meetings and that means that high yield online savings banks will begin increasing their rates as well. Already we’ve seen E*Trade increase their yield to 3.01%, inching closer to the bar that HSBC Direct has set at 2.60%. As we get closer to these future meetings, banks will start raising rates by a few tenths of a percent to entice you to move your savings from one bank to another.
Unless the rate difference is at least a 0.75% to a full 1%, I wouldn’t bother. On a $10,000 balance, half a percent is $50 if the dollars were transferred instantly. Take away taxes and you’re looking at even less. You’ll want to wait until it’s more, like $75 or $100 before you want to make the move because you lose interest when your money is between banks.
However, since the cost of opening a new account is near zero, you might want to consider opening an account at the highest current yield, 3.50% at HSBC Direct, and just move all new savings into that account for the time being.