Finding the best savings account doesn’t have to be a chore. In fact, it may be a lot easier than you think! Every month you see a new YouTuber posting a video about “The Best Savings Account for 2020” or “The Best Online Savings Account Available This Month”. Well there’s a site that will keep up to date with not only the best savings accounts, but online savings accounts with no minimum deposits, and the best high interest savings accounts too.
This ranks all of the current top savings accounts and ranks them based on compounding interest frequency, interest rate, lack of fees, and minimum deposit. This website is Bankrate.com.
I have no affiliation with Bankrate whatsoever, but discovered them over a decade ago when I first became a financial planner. It should be your first stop when shopping for the best savings accounts, checking accounts, car loans, mortgages, and even insurance! They’re unbiased and you can frequently find large banks as well as small banks on the site. They deal in all things financial and make a financial planner’s life a lot easier.
Now, if you’re looking for a car loan or something like that, I’d go to bankrate for competitive rates but I probably would go with a credit union, some place you can sit down and look the underwriter in the eye and get a better deal for being a member. But if you’re looking for a high yield interest savings account, bankrate is the place!
Now in the video I go over some things to look for in a savings account. These things are:
- Size of the bank. I prefer to always go with big banks. The reason? Longevity and deep pockets. Yes, I know it’s still possible for a big bank to fail, we can look at Bank of America from 2009; but where are all those small banks now? Exactly. No one is safe in a recession, but small banks can fail even in flourishing times.
And yes, your money is insured, but I personally don’t know the process to retrieving that money should the bank fail, and it’s insured up to a certain amount. Anything over that is lost.
GOOD big banks in my experience are usually very competitive with the smaller ones though, and if you’re using Bankrate.com, it shouldn’t be too hard to find a top tier bank to open up a savings account with.
The next thing I look at is minimum deposit. You want to find an online savings account with no minimum deposit, or at least one with a very low one. There’s no real reason to put more than $100 in 2020. Most of them only require a dollar, or some may say you need $100 to open the account but the amount you need to maintain to actually get the advertised APY interest rate is only a dollar or something low like that. So be sure to check for minimum deposit amounts as well as the minimum amount you need to maintain.
Another thing you want to look for when searching for the best savings account are monthly maintenance fees. You want them to be zero, period. I don’t care how big the bank is, what interest rate they’re offering, you want it to be NOTHING. Here’s the thing, if they’re even charging you $5 per month, unless you have AT LEAST 10 thousand dollars in there, the monthly maintenance fees will eat your interest right up! So zero fees.
The next thing is hidden fees. Some of these accounts have an early termination fee for example, or even a dormant account fee. The early termination fee for HSBC as an example states that if you close the account out before 6 months you owe $25. While that’s not a lot it’s still more than you want to pay. They might be offering the best high interest savings accounts right now, but there is a small catch to that. You can still withdraw, you just can’t close the account so if you do need it closed, just withdraw the money first, leave $1 in there and then close it out after the 6th month.
Dormant fees are fees that accrue when you stop using the account for 6 months, 12 months, etc. and the bank charges you a fee.
- The last thing I’d recommend is having a checking account with the bank as well. Let’s say you need the money in a pinch from your savings and you have to transfer it out. Well if you need to transfer from one bank to another, it will take a day or so, but transferring to a checking within the same bank is usually instant giving you access to the funds immediately.
You can visit Bankrate today to find the best savings account and more for free! https://www.bankrate.com
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