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My grandmother used to hide a $2 bill (not two $1 bills, but an actual $2 bill) every time she visited my house. Of course, when I found it she’d tell me to put it in my savings account. Now I’ve got about 57 $2 bills that I need to deposit. I want a high interest rate, a very low minimum balance and no fees. After a bit of research, here’s what I found.
Before you go to any bank website, check out an informative and helpful site, BankRate.com (2.3 million people per month — click on the "checking and savings" tab). You’ll learn which banks offer the highest money market / savings account rates across the country.
From there I learned Zion’s Bank is paying the highest rate in the country right now, 5.07% APY with a $1,000 minimum deposit. Not having quite that much cash on hand I found HSBCdirect.com pays 5.05% APY and has a $1 minimum deposit. This is who I ended up opening an account with.
Other banks you may want to consider that pay comparable rates are EmigrantDirect.com (5.00% APY) and CaptialOneDirect.com (5.00% APY). Both have a lot of site traffic, 320,000 and 142,000 people per month respectively.
Lastly, you may have heard of INGDirect.com. While I find their online experience great (and so do a lot of other people — 1.9 million people per month), they no longer pay as competitive of a rate, 4.35% APY.
So, the next time your grandmother decides to teach you a lesson about saving money, tell her you’ve moved on from the piggy bank to an online savings account offering 4-5% APY"¦with those kinds of rates, she might think twice about hiding $2 bills around the house and open an account of her own!
(Note — rates change on a daily basis. All rates quoted in this article are from 10:45AM ET, Monday July 24, 2006)
