Accountant · Spring Lake, MI · Member since 2020 · 42 posts · 26 votes
Hey BP, I have been looking at a couple online savings accounts to park some money in. Ally savings rate is 0.60% if I am correct. I also saw Chime.com but didn't know how reliable it was. It's APY is 1.00% and it also has the Round Ups feature, where it rounds up a purchase and places it in your savings account. Kind of like Acorn investing, but for savings accounts. And When I Get Paid helps you automatically save a percentage of every paycheck. Let me know your thoughts! Thank you.
I recently was researching the same topic I found alot of good things about Ally but one other bank to look into is Amex. They offer a savings account (no checking) but due to the same APY and great customer service Amex offers I decided to put my money with them.Good luck with your research!
@Ben Zelenka - I just did all of this research for myself, and I discovered a few things. The rates that banks (sometimes even the same bank) offer by state vary.
In Virginia, the best sign up bonus was for putting $50k in Citi Bank and getting $700 in 5 months. (New customers only, 2 months to qualify, 3 months until bonus is paid). The Citi Savings also offers a small return of like .1% that stacks with the sign up bonus. If you chase the $700, you should plan to move the money after payment and put into somewhere else. This is more of a headache than most sane people are willing to put up with, but it’s an option.
The best rate I found on a high interest savings was with Axos Bank at .83%. Minimum is very low and they seem great so far.
I used Redneck Bank about a year ago, the money market account. Not sure what rates are now
Redeneck Bank? Like a jar buried in your yard? Pays about the same as any of these 'high yield' savings options. LOL Oh- just read it really is a thing and pays .8% Quite the name!
I have money market accounts where I already broker and they are competitive No way I'm doing the work and hassle of opening and maintaining yet another account to try and eek out another .2% from somewhere.
So I use American Express for one of my online savings accounts. I enjoy that and the customer service is great and quick to respond to a phone call. This has most of my savings since it is reliable and established.
I also use a new app called Yotta Savings. It doesn’t have a “fixed” interest rates since it’s more about winning your interest as a “prize” for drawing lucky numbers, the more you deposit the more numbers you can play, increasing chances of winning interest. I’ve only used this for a couple weeks now, and have about 5% of my savings in it, but so far it is a lot of fun and I’d say my interest averages to about 1%, which is pretty good! It is new, but the things I’ve heard and seen so far are good.
Check out Yotta savings. You earn money based on a lottery system and its actually kind of fun to use. Here's a video from Ask Sebby explaining it in further detail.
https://youtu.be/ziGvywXzhfw
Ive put $5000 in the account and have "won" about $2 per week since I started using it
@Ben Zelenka Yotta savings is the best in my opinion I’m a math and economics major and a I wrote some software to calculate the expected savings rate and the expected average savings rate would be in between 1.6% and 3% depending on how many users are apart of the bank.
@Ben Zelenka I’ve used Barclays for the past few years for online savings. Looks like there are some more competitive options, but they do have a user friendly platform - no complaints.
I have used Ally for several years and they have been great, easy to use and great support when something goes wrong. Not sure that they still have the best rates but don’t see much point in chasing that extra 0.1%.
I also use Ally for the ease of their interface, a fairly decent interest rate, and high transfer limits. I also use Vio Bank, which is just ok. Their current interest rate is .76%, so slightly better than Ally. Vio doesn't have extensive requirements like regular direct deposits like some online banks require, my one beef with them is their transfer limits are low so I don't store lots of money there because it is slow to get it out if needed quickly.
@Ben Zelenka I have ALLY savings and checkings, I opened my accounts before COVID and I was receiving a decent rate of 2 percent and I was loving that monthly interest payment, but then COVID hit us and they dropped it drastically, I then opened ALLY stock account and moved every single penny to that account and purchased monthly paying stocks, due diligence is a must before you make this kind of move, I couldn’t help myself watching my money not making anything so that’s the reason why I made that move it’s worth it to me.
I've been a fan of Ally for awhile now. They had a very respectable interest rate of close to 2% awhile back, but things have dropped to 0.60% as you mentioned.
At the end of the day, the interest you get from a savings account isn't going to create any real wealth anyways so it's not a big deal. Best of luck!