I need to have a better place for my ER fund since WF’s getting use of it for free and I don’t exactly want to be doing WF any favors.
Also, I have a tenative goal to save $100 a paycheck for traveling internationally (List #38) because if I’m going to travel to Finland in Summer 2009 or someplace else within the year, I need to have a couple thousand ready for it. I didn’t note it in the list but I’ve set a rule to not get into any more debt unless it’s an emergency or for something really important (house/education/etc). NO BORROWING TO TRAVEL. However, I realize that it’d be prudent to have some kind of credit card available in case of emergency while traveling but that’s another story. I’ll figure that out later.
I’m fortunate that I get paid enough that with what’s left after the minimum bills & gas/food budget are accounted for, that saving for the trip is a reasonable goal. I will also still be able to work on putting extra towards paying off the debts (see Dad? got it under control). They’re not listed as a goal but if I stay on track, should be paid off in 1001 days anyways. That’s actually why I didn’t list them because they’re already accounted for and in progress.
GetRichSlowly had a nice list of online accounts but how to pick?
My criteria is, have to be able to set it up that I can transfer money between that account and my main bank account. That shouldn’t be a problem because I recently discovered that my bank has the ability to add “external accounts” now for transferring. It’s hooked to the account at WF and also to my credit union account now. Which means I can check off one of the subgoals in #6.
Other criteria, there must not be minimum balance or penalty for early withdrawal. Also no bogus bank charges. Should be as free as possible. Ideally, I’m only putting money in every month and won’t be taking it out til about a year from now when I can start booking for travel. However, I don’t think I want to lock it in anywhere (ie a CD) because then if say I end up going to Greece in the fall then I need to be able to get at the money!
And of course, best interest rate possible. In the comments on the GRS post, I see a lot of recommendations for GMAC’s accounts which have consistently above 5% rates. But alas that was a year ago tomorrow. BankRate.com’s charts seem to show that interest rates are down everywhere. Yes I do not follow the economy in the news.
Interesting, looks like my own bank has better rates than GMAC. I don’t carry a savings account on there because it’s linked to your checking and replaces the overdraft protection. I’d rather have the latter. However, I recently decided (and got myself into a little trouble with) that I needed another account to be able to put money that may not come out right away but needs to be saved for the short term. Ie the money for my taxes. Solution: Hook the savings to that account to get the 3.55% APY which is way better than GMAC’s 3.0% APY (as of today). Plus I already know this beast.
Click Click Click, and my tax money is now sitting in 3.55% APY savings account. That was fast and easy!
Really need at least two separate best interest accounts though. And they should be at another bank to guard against weak moments.
GMAC has 3.0% APY, what about ING, another favorite in the GRS comments? Also 3.0 APY on their Orange Savings.
But you know something? I just did a few calculations. I’m not currently dealing in amounts that really make that much of a difference. In a year’s time, saving $100 per paycheck should bring me about $2440 (at 3.55%). $40 isn’t enough to really pull out all the research stops on this right now.
I’ll be going with ING over GMAC because GMAC charges fees for less than $500 balance and I don’t want to have to worry about that if I have an emergency that brings the balance under that.
This makes me happy to know that I’ll getting more out of my money. ING for saving for the trip. The just opened 3.55% account for the ER fund. I realize that esp in the case of my taxes, I can dump the money into the ER fund for the interest time. When the time comes where I need to use it, I can then transfer it back out to the attached checking account and use it if directly debiting the savings account isn’t possible (sometimes it is).
So Goal #6 on the list is officially done. I’ve hooked up the credit accounts. My direct deposit request went in two weeks ago so should be effective very soon. And now I’ve found better place(s) for my savings than pathetic .1% savings or zero checking.
Only other thing I want to do is check with the credit union on Monday about their rates since it’s not easy to find them on their website. Despite not really having any money there, they had a really good year in 2007 and I got $16 just for having a loan there and $5 in a savings account (min required to hold it open). If I’d had checking, would have gotten more.
Whoa hold the phone… 4.50% APY available That’s what I get for not reading the most recent comments on the GRS post! Ok I was going to wait til another day to actually setup another account but I’m going to jump on that with a small test transfer from my ER account. The money I’ve saved to repay L is sitting there anyways, can use it as a guinea pig to test how fast money moves between accounts. Ok opened and it’s actually 4.40% right now which is fine, the other number was as of a month ago.
Hope that’s useful for someone cause I know other people who are working on savings too right now.