Welcome to How I Save Money. Every month the members of The Wealth, Money & Life Network choose a topic to post on and we each give our own perspective on our respective blogs. Our topic for the month of July is Interest Rates and we wrote about Emergency Funds in May and Gas in June.
I recently got some interest income from my ING accounts and this gave my balances a nice little lift. I do not try to calculate how much interest I will be getting, nor do I count on it as a given. I am just happy to get it when I do get it and I treat it as a bonus.
Now I know that many people think this is not a very good approach to managing my finances but I I am content as of now to treat my interest income as passive income.
I do not have to do anything extra to get it because my paycheck is automatically deposited into an interest bearing account and all of my transfers are also set up to occur automatically.
I do log into my accounts every few days to make sure everything was sent on time but I really do not have to do any work at all to get my interest.
Right now ING offers me the following interest rates:
- Savings 3.00%
- Checking 1.74%
- 6 Month CD 3.30%
These rates are good for me, even though there are other banks that claim to offer higher rates on savings. In truth, many of the other banks have higher rates for a limited amount of time and then after the trial period, they drop to lower than ING’s rates. I would much rather get this steady rate for now than have to deal with the hassle of moving money all around the place all the time….so I have stopped being a rate chaser.
Do you continue to chase rates or are you satisfied with the rates that you currently earn?
(Remember to enter the drawing for a FREE Gas card from How I Save Money to lower YOUR gas bill in July.)
I used to rate shop, but a few years ago it just became too much effort to keep up. I realized that unless you have something in the high 5 figures or more (which I don’t have in savings), the slight difference between the major players doesn’t amount to that much. As a result I scaled back to ING Direct, and HSBC. ING because they have the best website of any bank I’ve ever seen, and HSBC because they had the highest rate at the time.
My wife and I are purchasing a new house next month, so we’ve taken a hit on the savings account but it was nice to see that the interest we accrued last month alone bumped our total amount back above $6k. Passive income is a beautiful thing indeed. 🙂
i have my savings in HSBC Online which offers 3.5%. i don’t chase rates, and that’s the best i’ve found 🙂
Good for you Tiffanie. At least you are getting a good rate with them so keep on saving.
I agree with your approach. If you can get good consistent rates, then stick with it. If you are constantly chasing rates every 3 – 6 months, that extra time can add up.