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

Not strictly a savings account, but if you have PayPal, you can enable the money you put there to be placed in a money-market account. Not FDIC insured, but it does pay 5.05% now. There’s no fee, so if you have any money in a PayPal account, it shouldn’t hurt, right?

I kept my ING Orange Savings account since I figured out that i needed to pile up some money for Taxes.

The phone support is amasing, provided you can find the Phone number!

In anycase, I am a big fan of stability. I transfer almost 1K into the account every month, and I just love watching the interest dollars earn more and more.

Also, ING Direct tells you whats going on in your account, ie Deposits, or widthdrawals, they even tell you when the interest rate has been increased! I like getting those emails.

ING Direct has been working out well with my linked BofA account. I just wonder how easy is it for me to link my Scottrade acct to my Orange Savings so I can move money in an out of the market.

Currently Scottrade pays like a bank on unused funds available for trading. However they do offer CD’s and MoneyMarket.

Just my $0.02

-Israel

Wow, I’ve always been a huge fan of ING but I didn’t know it had as many strong supporters as it does here. To join the crowd: it also takes me 3-4 days to put money into ING from BoA, but only takes 1-2 days to withdraw money from ING to BoA.

HSBC also seems to be a fan favorite here too. I’ve honestly looked into it, but I guess I just can’t get use to their web interface. I personally like ING’s better.

Well JD, from the sound of the votes it seems you really have two strong contenders: ING and HSBC.

I clicked through from the RSS hoping somebody would say more about the E-Trade QuickTransfer. Oh well.

I have been using HSBC for a month or so, but don’t have anything to compare it to. In this case, I guess it is fine.

moved from ING to GMAC about 18 months ago ( based on bankrate.com info). GMAC is faster and the rate is higher. Very happy with the switch. I use the big local bank ( Chase ) for checking/ATM because they have waaaay more free atm’s here ( Chicago ) than anyone else.

EmigrantDirect’s rate (5.05) isn’t the highest, but their transfer feature allows you to set an exact date on which transfered money appears in the target account, rather than the generic 2-3 days. Very useful for timing bills and other transactions.

Dustin, I think “outbound” QuickTransfers are pretty average, but “inbound” transfers (from your external checking account, for example) actually credit on the day of the request. I don’t particularly care if the money isn’t wired directly as long as I’m paid interest on the assumption that it is.

I have an E*Trade Complete Savings account, which I opened largely because I keep almost all of my banking/brokerage accounts there. Overall, I like the features and offerings, and I really like the idea of keeping everything in one spot.

There are a couple of things I don’t like. First, the time it takes to fund a new account is excessive. Even if you transfer money from an existing E*Trade account, it takes something like 7 business days for the transfer to take place.

Also, the banking side of E*Trade went through a core software conversion recently, and I lost the ability to automatically update through MSMoney. The brokerage accounts work fine. They don’t seem to have designs on fixing this.

Add me to the list of PayPal fans. Besides the 5.05% APR, you can also get a PayPal debit card which pays 1% cash back on purchases. The money is instantly refunded back into your account. Plus withdrawing cash and transferring funds to your bank account or any other PayPal user is easy. Also, if you link your bank account and you charge more than you have in your account, PayPal will draw the balance from your checking account automatically, up to a certain amount.

@Don

There are no fees associated for transferring money between ING and BoA.

I “virtually” do all my banking online using the Electric Orange account. Money is directly deposited there, and I use that account to pay all my bills too. I still have my ING linked to BoA simply because I travel a lot and I’m always able to find a BoA ATM machine to pull out any needed cash.

Another ING fan here; I’ve been using them for almost a year and am really pleased. The website is secure, thoughtfully laid-out and extremely easy to use. I recently shifted the bulk of my savings cash over to HSBC to take advantage of the 6% deal they’re running, but when that deal ends I’ll send the cash back to ING. HSBC’s website is a wreck.

i use emigrant direct. they used to guarantee the highest rate in the country until HSBC put the squeeze on ‘em. but i like the fact that there’s no minimum to open or maintain the account. you earn 5.05% regardless of how much you have in there.

emigrant is also pretty good about matching rates too. in the year or so i’ve had the account, emigrant has pretty much kept pace with hsbc.

i also have a checking account with wachovia. transfers between the two are pretty seamless. i just schedule the transfer (either direction) with emigrant.

in the last few months, it’s taken no more than a day to transfer money between the accounts. but in the past, i’ve had to wait three or four days.

All four of my accounts (interest-bearing checking, Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, and taxable brokerage, which I use as ‘savings’) are with E*Trade and I couldn’t be happier. By having all of my accounts with E*Trade, I am well-above the minimums to avoid monthly fees (including ATM fees) even though any individual account may drop below- it’s the sum total they look at. I have one dashboard for all my accounts at a glance.

I’ve never had any problems with transfers, since they’re now all to other E*Trade accounts. There are no limits to transfers and they can be scheduled or one-time, nearly instantaneous.

Any downside to one-stop-shopping (such as the amount of time it takes to get all your accounts transfered) isn’t going to be limited to E*Trade, it’s going to be the same no matter where you go.

You all should check out GE Money as well. They offer tiered APYs, with the highest being 5.05%

http://www.gemoney.com/personal/savings/index.html

Very simple to set up and manage! No minimum and you can set up automatic transfers.

Another CITI customer chiming in. I used ING in the past and it was great, but Citi allows you to withdraw from your online MMA at the branch same day. So you have access to your MMA at a branch and transfers to checking accounts are available same day, unlike with ING or other “traditional online banks” (if such a thing exists for a service that is only ~two years old). Moved to Citi a few months ago, really couldn’t be happier. Much more user friendly than ING or EmigrantDirect. My money is available at all times.

I have been using Emigrant Direct for 6 months and have been very pleased so far. They employ more security than just a username and password which I like. I should have done this sooner. My brick bank is paying .10% (that is a tenth of a percent) on my savings so I moved my money over to Emigrant at 5.00% and have been very happy since. Stay away from Etrade! I had a brokerage account there and they were penalizing me since I did not have the minimum balance and never let me know. Pretty crooked if you ask me. I introduced my parents to Emigrant and the 2 initial deposits they do for security was more money than they earned on the $10,000 in the brick bank from the previous month! Were talking about $1.50 but just shows you how the brick banks are fleecing everyone right now.

A great site for tracking the best rates on savings accounts, cds, money markets, etc is Best Cash Cow.

Enjoy.

USAA has the most AMAZING customer service. Business Week rated it #1 in customer service above (2)Four Seasons, (3)Cadillac, (4)Nordstroms, and (5)Wegmans. Their service is so good we have our checking, savings, credit cards, mortgage, home & auto insurance with them. Any time we have tried somewhere else, we get so pissed off with the customer service we end up right back with USAA. We rarely have to wait when calling them, their phone numbers are obvious (and you’re encouraged to use them), and their reps across the board are EXTREMELY patient and nice. Just recently my husband called to change our insurance from renters to homeowners, and they (without prompting) let him know that we qualified for new discounts on our already active auto insurance.

For savings accounts, you get 4.85% above $10k. For the checking they reimburse you up to $10 a month for ATM fees, and don’t charge any themselves. So, if we use a BofA ATM, eg, we get the $2.50 back that BofA charges. That means we can use any ATM anywhere for free. They also have the Deposit@Home program where you scan a check in, and deposit it electronically. It’s amazing. Their brokerage accounts have trades that are $5.95 or $11.95 depending on the amount in your account.

The website makes it seem like you need to either be in the military or have a spouse/parent that is/was (my case), however we have friends that opened banking accounts without this requirement, but they can’t get the insurance. So it might be worth a call. (1-800-531-2265)

Honestly, I can’t rave enough about them!

I don’t think anyone mentioned this, but HSBC has ATM access too. As an added incentive for California customers, you can withdraw money from any Wells Fargo ATM without any fees. The exchange rate from withdrawing from an HSBC ATM in a foreign country is better than any rate I can get from any currency exchange service.

I can vouch for ING Direct.
Very easy to use. No nonsense transaction capabilities. Money in, money out, money into CDs, etc.

I’m sure the other banks are fine too.

Most of the other points have been covered already so I’ll just mention that I like Emigrant over HSBC and ING purely because I can log in with a username that I selected.

Both HSBC and ING identify you with an assigned long customer number that I had to look up every time I wanted to log in.

Maybe you said it had to be FDIC insured, as you mentioned the ones originally listed all were, but I stand by Ford’s Interest Advantage account.

- Need $1000.
- Free transfer in/out from another bank acct.
- Free checks and unlimited check writing above $250.
- No fees.

Current rates as of Mar 19th:
Invested InterestRate CompoundYield
Under $15,000 5.75% 5.90%
$15,000 to $50,000 5.90% 6.06%
Over $50,000 6.05% 6.22%

Pc Financial is the best bank online in Canada for a savings account. 4% interest in the savings account on balances over $1000 no fees on anything, and you can use any CIBC atm in canada for free. I really don’t understand why everyone doesnt use it.

+1 for HSBC — I’ve been using them for a little over a year now after switching from ING Direct. HSBC consistently has higher rates than ING, which was my reason for switching.

HSBC does not currently do the “long customer number” thing mentioned above. I log in with a user name, although they do the new image/cookie thing along with 2 passwords. Security is a good thing though…

I am interested in looking around at better rates for larger amounts of $$$.