Switching banks + ING Direct Referral?
polycounter lvl 14
Hey guys,
Now that I have a full time job it's time to switch banks. The local credit union I am at right now is offering an abysmal .05 APY for my savings, so it's definitely time to start looking.
After doing a bit of research, I was pretty impressed with both Ally and ING Direct. At this time, savings wise, Ally has a 1.04% APY and ING Direct has 1% APY. I'm not so concerned about checking rates.
I'll probably make the jump to ING, but I thought I'd ask my fellow polycounters on their experiences. I'm mainly hesitate to go to Ally because something like 75% of it is owned by the U.S. Treasury... While Ally does have paper checks and a better ATM service, I like how ING handles overdrafts.
If anyone does have ING Direct, you can make $10 off a referral and I can make $25 for using a referral to get started. I think I can do the same thing with checking through ING, so if you have both (or I guess one or the other), shoot me a PM and we'll hook each other up. It's not much, but hey, it's something.
Now that I have a full time job it's time to switch banks. The local credit union I am at right now is offering an abysmal .05 APY for my savings, so it's definitely time to start looking.
After doing a bit of research, I was pretty impressed with both Ally and ING Direct. At this time, savings wise, Ally has a 1.04% APY and ING Direct has 1% APY. I'm not so concerned about checking rates.
I'll probably make the jump to ING, but I thought I'd ask my fellow polycounters on their experiences. I'm mainly hesitate to go to Ally because something like 75% of it is owned by the U.S. Treasury... While Ally does have paper checks and a better ATM service, I like how ING handles overdrafts.
If anyone does have ING Direct, you can make $10 off a referral and I can make $25 for using a referral to get started. I think I can do the same thing with checking through ING, so if you have both (or I guess one or the other), shoot me a PM and we'll hook each other up. It's not much, but hey, it's something.
Replies
edit:
for what it's worth, I switched to ING last month and I really dig them a bunch. I'm going with a local credit union here in Providence just to have a brick and mortar bank, but ING is my main account.
I have a variety of accounts for things like retirement, taxes, home improvements etc etc. Every year I dump the balance of my ING retirement account into a Roth IRA, its nice to have access to it for emergencies while its accumulating and still earn a decent interest rate on it.
when the inflation rate is claimed to be around 3% but has been proven across the board by multiple financial analysts that that is a complete lie and the actual inflation rate is really 5-7% in the US, leaving your money just sitting in the bank means it constantly decreasing in value. so you end up losing about 5% of your money each year. ugh.
Yeah, "saving" your money in a standard savings account is just a bad idea, you're losing against the trend and you have to invest pretty aggressively just to keep up with inflation.
We had some money in a money market account, but its performance of late wasn't any better than bank down the street's savings account, so we put it into our IRA.
This is always the case. That's how the banks make money.
Savings accounts are a waste of time. Some kind of managed fund is a good alternative. Or just make more 401k/retirement contributions.
Having just stepped into this whole finance world within the last six months, this was something really confusing to me when looking at different possibilities. MMA's seemed cool, but I thought they were suppose to offer better rates, not similar or, in some cases, lower ones.
This is something I was heavily considering but don't really have enough understanding of yet. These can replace savings? I can deposit/withdraw money at any time?
My plan is to save up three months wages into an emergency fund and just let that sit in a savings account (A sub account on ING). I have various other goals in my future, and I was thinking about having sub savings accounts for those as well (maybe invest?). Besides using my checking to pay bills and what not, should I then be investing in mutual funds? Or is this something that can completely replace savings?
Mutual funds = stock market... I'm not sure I feel comfortable putting my savings. I fear it's also not as liquid as I need it to be. It's just stuff like this that is holding me back and convincing me a savings is the way to go for now.
for reference (this may or may not be useful to you), this is how I've broken up my income:
401k (if your company has it, use it!)
Additional Investments
Emergency Fund
Short-Term savings
Bills
Monthly Expenses
It's worked really well for me so far. some into 401k, and then some immediately into another investment that way it's spread out a little. after that, I build my emergency fund until it reaches a certain amount you feel comfortable with. whenever I use anything from this I replenish it immediately.
for me, Short Term savings are things like clothes, gifts, travel/vacations, instruments/expensive toys, and other purchases that may come up that aren't regular.
Bills are self explanatory, I usually put everything I know I owe in here ASAP so it's available and not screwing me over
then I give myself a per paycheck budget that will pay for things like games, food, gas, entertainment, going for drinks, etc. whatever happens and reoccurs regularly. *edit* if there's any balance left over, I roll this over to my short term savings
I haven't had any issues yet.
I would say to swap out short term savings and 'other investments' for PAYING BACK YOUR LOANS ASAP. (even more toward the principal of the loan, if you can afford it).
but uhhh, yeah. hope that maybe helps somehow? I only really use bank 'Savings' accounts to separate my money so it's easier to read.
A managed fund is a mutual fund. It's still pretty liquid.
But if you just want an emergency fund then don't even bother looking at interest rates. You'll never get something as liquid as a savings account that has a decent rate of return.
Yup! Been using it for a week now. It's very nice! =]
EDIT: Wow, just talked with customer service and they are AWESOME. I goofed up transferring funds around and they did a lot more for me than a normal bank would have. I am pleased.
yeah dude, of course.
best piece of advice I can give is to pay MORE than the minimum when payments are due, and make sure as hell you tell them to apply anything past the due amount to the PRINCIPAL, otherwise most companies will simply use it as an advance on your next payment. What this means is you'll wind up paying more (because you're paying money to interest) in the long run, versus paying down the core amount the interest is based upon.
it looks like you got yourself in a steady place, good luck dude.
and yeah, mint rules.
Yeah historically they have been good, however with the current market conditions, our MMA really dipped down to like 0.13% interest or something retarded. So we pulled our money out of that and put into a relatively aggressive Roth IRA.
We have a guy we work with that handles our IRA(and used to handle the MMA) at Ameriprise. Tottally worth the cost to pay for someone who is going to manage this stuff and is much smarter with money than we are. I would look into that, not specifically Ameriprise, but having a financial advisor. I think we pay him something silly like $40 a year too look after our IRA.
An IGN account can certainly replace a savings account, a MMA or IRA or similar will not, as both will have some sort of pentalty for early withdrawl. Transferring money out of your IGN account is free, easy and just takes a couple days to process.
I put a relatively small % of my savings into my IRA per year, and keep most of it liquid(in ING), its good to have for emergencies, and as a contractor, when you might go a decent amount of time with now work, its always good to have quick access to cash.