Which Online High-Yield Money Market & High-Interest Savings Account is Best?

I have had an EverBank checking account for a year now and the customer service is simply amazing. I get 3% interest for checking and they offer a money market account with 5% and 6% into for 3 months with only a $1500 minimum.

Citibank’s e-Savings account has a 4.75% rate, but it requires a Citi checking account. A Citi checking accounts can be a fantastic deal if you live someplace with no Citi branches; they will reimburse ATM surcharges if there is no Citibank in your home county.

I moved my checking and savings to Citi a few years back and I have not paid a single bank fee since. In fact, they were running a promo at the time that paid me for moving my accounts, so I’ve come out $200 ahead on the whole deal. You can also do instant transfers among your accounts, which is handy if you try to keep your checking balance at a bare minimum.

I’ve used HSBC’s online savings account at 5.05% for about six months now for my emergency fund. Account security is second to none, customer service isn’t half bad, and I love watching that interest roll in month after month.

As an added bonus, they’ll give you 6% on all money deposited before 4/30.

I have been using ING Direct for a while and recently opened an Orange checking account as well. The checking account actually pays a higher interest rate than the savings, if your balance is more than $50,000.

ING will give you $25 bonus if you find a referral link (all over the web); I could even give you one. We have 3 accounts with them because it’s so easy to set up additional accounts and it’s nice to keep large items were saving for separate (vacation, taxes, computer). The bank transfer can be slow at times (why does it take 3 days to transfer money between banks?); I’m not sure if that’s true at all banks.

I didn’t realize we’re loosing 0.5% by going with them (vs E-trade), with the amount we keep there, it’s probably not worth the hassle of moving though.

whoa… messed up comment. I guess it doesn’t like less than symbols

Anyway, for less than $10,000, the APY is only 4%.

Clearly they’re trying to be sneaky, which is a good reason to steer clear of them.

Have you considered a brokerage account? They usually also have money market mutual funds for 5% or better (not FDIC but still your risk is pretty much 0). You can online link to/from your checking accounts and transfer very easily and quickly. I have a Fidelity account and am very happy with it; also like the fact that I have $8 trades (I have a Gold account though; most trades are $10) another one to think about is Ameritrade. They just got a huge writeup today on cust sat and I can’t imagine that they wouldn’t have a high yielding money market mutual fund.

oops I meant to say more. Transfers are only 1-2 days between Fidelity and BofA so pretty quickly. The default settlement account, a municipal money market and thus tax free, is 3.5%. Really, good stuff! And you can buy CDs for free and since there’s so much visibility through Fidelity, banks list pretty competitive CDs (I buy CDs 6-12 month term with monthly payouts with annual rates of 5.2% which is great; CDs are FDIC insured).

Great article, I’d like to see similar about the variety of IRA options that are out there.

I started with ING, but HSBC is better. I love the EasyView service, which is a “view all online accounts on one page.” I have set up 20 accounts to view there–it totals it all up and sections it out.

Is Captial One really the only one that offers a Debit Card with the account? I like the idea of how easy it could be to access the account, but I’m not a huge fan of CO. I’ve looked into ING, but I don’t think they have a debit card, anyone know for sure?

Be warned of the citibank account. I’m not sure how other’s work when tied to your checking but with this account you can only make about 6 transfers out of it to your checking during a billing cycle… online at least.. I was successful completing a transfer at the ATM

One that you left out is PayPal. Most of us already have PayPal accounts, and they offer a Money Market account that is earning 5.05% APY. I don’t keep tons of money there, but it’s nice to have for (minimal) eBay income not to have to worry about it before I transfer it to my bank account.

I personally use ING Direct for my savings account. I’ve been using ING since 2001, though I haven’t been very active with it until November of last year (hard to get into savings when you’re in college). I’m one of those people who wants to do EVERYthing online and thinks that everything should be instantaneous.
And while yes, ING’s transactions aren’t what I would consider instantaneous (usually takes 3-4 days for deposits and withdraws to process) it’s pretty good considering it’s a 99% online acocunt. That and I have it linked to my BoA account, so I tend to blame the slowness on BoA

I haven’t heard of this Electric Orange thing they’re doing though, but I’m excited for it to go public! I have a feeling you’d only be able to do direct deposit though… someone needs to invent a way to deposit paper checks online.

Definitely look at features in addition to rates. I did a lot of research (bankrate.com, as others have mentioned) before choosing GMAC for myself. They have high rates (5.1% currently), fast ACH transfers, a debit card, and *free checking*. The last is the most important for me. It is limited to three checks written per month, but since I rarely write checks, it’s perfect for me, personally. I don’t need a separate checking account at all – everything goes in the MMA with its high interest.

I use Amboy Direct 5.25% APY up to $19,999. 5.35% paid for $20,000 and up. FDIC insured.

I initially signed up with ING for a 5% promotion that they were running and have to say that compared to some banks like Wells Fargo, the interest rates at ING are pretty good considering that there is no minimum balance required. A few things to note with ING:

(1) If you are putting money into an ING account via electronic transfer, it takes several days to link the accounts; basically ING does some small (i.e., less than $1) deposits into the account that you are linking to and you are required to verify those amounts on the ING site before you can transfer funds. The amount of time it takes for these amounts to appear in your linked account is a good indication of how long it takes to transfer money between accounts.

(2) It does take a few days for actual transfers to complete; I’m linked to a Wells Fargo account and it seems to take around 4 business days for transfers.

(3) ING’s security for accounts is pretty extraordinary. A note of caution is to be sure that you are paying attention as you go through the security steps, especially if you are accessing your account(s) through different computers.

(4) Additional savings accounts are very easy to set up (and close) if you have a particular goal you are saving for.

Electric Orange (“EO”) seems to be available to ING customers that have a savings account; I’m pretty sure that if you find a savings account you will be able to sign up for EO. While the EO rates tend to be more aggressive than brick and mortar banks, you really need to get $50K into the account to realize the big 5.05% APR. A few notes about EO:

(1) You can immediately fund an EO account from an ING savings account, which makes it very easy to open an EO account as there is not minimum for EO accounts.

(2) EO accounts, like most traditional bank checking accounts, do provide overdraft protection — I have to imagine that this is formulaic based on the funds in your EO, funds in ING Savings, and probably your credit score.

(3) EO easily shows you your purchasing power, which includes the overdraft protection.

(4) This account is fully paperless — don’t sign up expecting to receive paper checks in the mail. Online bill pay and a cool feature called “electronic checks” (this allows you to send checks via e-mail) are included with every account.

(5) You do receive an EO Mastercard debit card, but unlike traditional banks, there does not appear to be levels (i.e., gold, platinum, etc.) based on the amount of funds in the account, so be aware that there are daily point-of-sale and withdrawal limits.

(6) EO uses a network of ATMs on the AllPoint ATM network to provide fee-free ATMs. In my case, most of the ATMs are in Target stores, making it somewhat inconvenient to do all of my traditional ATM banking.

In summary: I keep some amount of money in ING savings accounts for different purposes and some amount of money in EO to earn a much higher interest rate than most traditional bank checking accounts, but I still maintain accounts at a traditional bank to ensure some amount of immediate cash and to make my ATM banking easier. I have to admit that I have yet to use the EO debit card and do most of my deposits and withdrawals through my traditional bank, interacting with my ING accounts via electronic transfer.

I want to switch bank accounts, but I am a minor. I could get my parents to make an account for me and then put my money in it, but then I would be taxed at their rate. I have almost $5000 and am really looking for a way to make higher returns on it (as compared to my 1.25 rate). Any tips for minors?

>Has anyone used this? Do other banks offer similar features?

Money Center from Yodlee is a full aggregation service. At the back-end on a few of these banks, yodlee is the software that is used.

https://moneycenter.yodlee.com

Bank of America also uses Yodlee aggregation service in “My Portfolio”.

OK, I’m really late to this article, but I’ll echo nearly everyone else about ING. I’ve been using them for nearly two years now and have been more than thrilled. The new interface is uber secure, the actual transfering of money is super easy and the options to do auto-deposits on a regular basis is great.

The downside to ING that I’ve found is that it takes 10 full days from the time you transfer money till the time you start earning it.

A co-worker recently tried HSBC because he wanted to make a bit more money than his ING account, he left after three weeks due to the horrible interface and lackluster customer support. ING has some of the best phone support I’ve ever dealt with, even at 2am!

My mortgage is through CountryWide and I recently had a bad taste from a poor experience with their phone support, it was resolved in a timely manor and I am once again liking the company. I have recently received the offers with my bill for their new high interest accounts but don’t like the idea of having to keep $10k in them – I’d like to keep my money a little more liquid right now.

Fighting over .5% for me isn’t worth it right now, I’ll take the slightly lower rate and great customer service ING has been providing me with thus far.