Wednesday, September 12, 2012

High Interest Checking Accounts

Many financial institutions advertise interest bearing checking accounts (yippee!), but wait... they are as widespread on the interest spectrum as there are theories on how to raise your kids!

According to Bankrate,com, as of May 2012, high-yield checking accounts averaged over 2% while interest on traditional interest-bearing checking accounts was a whopping 0.06%. So you could be making 33 times more money if you just do your research (or read this!).

So of course you want the high-yield account... what's the catch? You will likely have to meet certain monthly requirements, and of course, you have to move your checking account (which can be a hassle with all the automatic bill payments these days). Read the fine print for the reqs before you sign up to make sure you can meet them (i.e. direct deposit, certain number of debit transactions, minimum balance etc.)

A great place to start:
  • Check out the results of Bankrate.com's survey on interest bearing checking accounts for both banks and credit unions.
  • Play around on DepositAccount.com's interest rate finder for checking accounts (both online/ national and those in your area). While Bankrate is very helpful, DepositAccount.com is a bit less biased by advertisers.

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