Any good and reliable high interest saving/checking accounts out there?
@pimpin, I guess you missed the memo that Mugabe is requiring that foreign companies give up a certain percentage of ownership in their companies. I assume you were joking. @smuggy, Alliant Credit Union has a 1.15% APY for Savings and 1.1% for checking ( www.alliantcreditunion.org ). Also they have a 4yr, 2.1% CD. I haven’t found a reputable place that has better rates. And their loan rates are very good also.
Thanks Zesty.
ING direct. Always among the highest in interest rates on their standard savings accounts… They have no branches, and you just simply transfte the money to your regular institution when you need the funds (make sure you don’t keep all of it in ING though, as the transfer takes a few days) right now their savings account gives 1.5% - which we all know is relatively ‘high’ right now.
@BuySide, That must be ING Direct Canada because ING Direct USA is only 0.9%
American Express personal savings is offering 1% on their savings accts right now. That’s so low… I’d just go buy Altria stocks and call it a day. That stock is *nearly* as solid as a savings account, as far as I’m concerned.
@Krazy, Did you miss the memo about the new cigarette packs that are planned to be mandated in the U.S. and Australia? As far as I’m concerned there is no such thing as a solid equity position. http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/27/news/la-heb-australia-cigarette-plain-labels-20110627
I assume that both ING and AMEX are both FDIC insured, but it seems that they could borrow brokered, borrow at the FHLB, or borrow from their correspondent banks for much cheaper and in so doing they could take on term borrowings which reduces the funding uncertainty of demand accounts. Most likely they aren’t able to do this for some regulatory reason or they’ve already tapped them out. That, however, raises the question that in this interest rate environment why isn’t everyone moving their money there since their rates are so far above market? Does AMEX lend the money as unsecured revolving debt or do they have a separate banking division that makes ‘traditional’ loans? What does ING do with the money? How well capitalized are they? Seems crazy to pay this much on demand accounts when most banks are struggling to find ways to deploy all of their excess liquidity.
I don’t know how they do it, but I’ve been pretty happy with ING Direct. They are FDIC insured. As of last friday, they reset the APY to 0.90%. It’s been 1.00% since Feb, and it was 1.10% for the year before that. It’s still way better than I see at any brick-and-morter bank.
@ Zesty: At the risk of threadjacking, I do see your point. There is always risk involved in equity positions. At the young point in my life with no family to support, I plan on holding a relatively small amount in savings and a lot in relatively stable equities. As far as the new packaging, I have heard about it and I don’t think it will have much, if any incremental effect. Cig volumes in the US are already in a natural decline. Thankfully for people like me who are long tobacco stocks, the ability to raise prices exceeds the % decline in volume and I don’t see the packaging having any additional effect. I saw that because I lived in Canada when Health Canada required cigarette companies do this exact thing about 10 years ago and it didn’t have any effect on the smokers that I knew.
Addicts aren’t going to change their behaviour because of packaging, they already know the product is going to kill them.
@Krazy, Canada is a little different, if I remember correctly, because Canada allows them to display their logo, etc. From my understanding, the Australian law wouldn’t allow the cigarette companies to display their logo on the pack (just standard font of company name). PhillipMorris Asia is suing because of this; again if my memory serves me right. Also, I would ask, in Canada did it have any effect in preventing youth from smoking; thereby decreasing future revenue streams? Or do you still see cigarettes as an item of inelastic demand (i.e., they will just continue to raise prices to make up the difference), any thoughts? @bodhis, You’re right addicts will continue to be addicts. But I’m more so talking about it discouraging teens/etc from picking up the habit. But I might be wrong.