I have always said that I wouldn’t chase rates when it came to high yield online savings accounts. I have an account with ING that I use for both my long-term savings and my day to day account, as well as bill-pay and I (luckily) opened a CD with them just before the rates dropped. I signed up thanks to the lure of the $25 bonus, and I’ve not been disappointed.
But ING’s interest rates have dropped severely over the past few months. Most banks have dropped their rates as the Fed has dropped rates, but ING’s last drop seemed fairly extreme. From 4.1% all the way down to 3.65%. As a comparison, HSBC Direct is currently at 4.25%. Thanks to Flexo over at Consumerism Commentary, you can check out the interest rates at a number of banks.
As part of my Dollar a Day savings plan, I decided to open up an HSBC Direct account, and planned to only use it for the money I’m depositing for the dollar a day plan. Now that I see the discrepancy in the accounts, I’m tempted to move my long-term savings account there instead. I love the fact that I can have sub-accounts with ING, and I wish that HSBC had the same features.
I’m still waiting on my username and password from HSBC Direct, so no final decision has been made yet. I may just use HSBC Direct for the Dollar a Day plan to begin with and then make my decision after spending some time with them first.
Megan is a 40-something government employee in the Washington, DC area. She got interested in Personal Finance when she got out of college and realized that her paycheck wasn’t going to go as far as she had hoped. Since starting this blog, she has managed to buy a house and make a solid start on her retirement goals, and hopes to help others do the same. Here is her story:
In 2007, I was a gainfully employed 20-something with no debt but not a lot of knowledge about personal finance. It was a co-worker’s comment about Roth IRAs that sent me to the internet, searching for information. It was then that I realized that I really didn’t know a whole lot about personal finance and that my current financial situation was due a lot to inherent frugal tendencies, generous family members, a fear of debt, and good luck. While that was working for me, clearly I needed a better plan.
While I had no debt, I was also pretty much living paycheck to paycheck and not worrying about going over budget (I say this as if I had a real budget) because I had an emergency fund set aside to cover any overages.
Except that’s not what an emergency fund is for.
So I did a lot of research, read a lot of blogs, and decided that I needed a plan. I needed to budget. I needed to know what I was spending my money on. I needed to prepare for the future.
I decided to create a blog not only to make myself accountable to others but also to share the knowledge that I gained along the way. I’ve learned so much from my fellow bloggers, and I hope that my readers can find something useful in what I have to share as well.
