Here’s another long-term CD with such a small early withdrawal penalty it’s a better bet than the top-paying short-term CDs.

It’s Ally Bank’s 5-year certificate of deposit.
We got into this discussion last week, when we looked at whether the three best 5-year CDs could be gamed to out-earn the best 12- or 24-month CDs.
We found the [...]

We’re adding the high-yield checking account at Danversbank to our list of favorites.

It’s paying 4.01% APY on balances up to $25,000 — a rate that’s almost impossible to find these days, even on 7-year CDs — with free ATM use and no monthly fees.
Although the rate on these accounts is always variable, Danversbank hasn’t changed [...]

A couple of months ago we advised against buying long-term CDs at the bottom of a rate cycle.

The common wisdom is to go long at the top of a rate cycle and short at the bottom.
Some of our readers disagreed with that strategy.
“You can usually go for the longest term to lock in [...]

Let’s see if we can take some of the anxiety out of deciding whether it’s smart to convert your traditional IRA to Roth IRAs this year.
It’s a good move for younger savers who are a long way from retirement and can expect to be making more in retirement than they are in their late ’20s [...]

Less than two weeks ago we scoured the country to find the top-paying savings accounts.

But three of the five rates have already been cut, including the top two.
That sent us back to work and we’re pleased to report that we’ve found four new deals that are actually better than the ones they replace.
These offers clearly [...]

It’s come to this.
U.S. savings bonds — yeah, savings bonds — have become a better investment than most CDs.
Series I Bonds are paying 3.36%, which is more than the best, nationally available 6-month, 12-month, 24-month and even 36-month certificates of deposit.
Indeed, only a few top-paying 5-year CDs can beat that return.
Although the interest rate on [...]

Is this the wave of the future?
The new Electric Orange checking account from ING Direct doesn’t come with checks.
It’s the closest thing to a truly paperless checking account we’ve ever seen.
The online bank owned by the Dutch financial giant ING allows customers to access their money through:

A debit card.
An online bill payment system.
Person2Person electronic transfers, [...]

With interest rates this low, you need to make the most of every opportunity to boost the return on your savings.
That means taking advantage of your bank’s “relationship” rates.
In most instances, that’s where checking account customers are offered higher interest rates on savings accounts or certificates of deposits.
Some relationship deals don’t make you feel all [...]

You can earn far more from a top-paying savings account than you can from most short-term CDs.

The average return on 12-month certificates of deposit has fallen to a measly 0.77% APY, and the average return on 24-month CDs has plunged to 1.19% APY.
But Colorado Federal Savings Bank is paying 1.70% APY on its savings [...]

It’s come to this: The biggest banks are paying nothing for our savings.
Or at least nothing for the money we put in our savings accounts.
Here’s the return the four largest banks are now offering on their regular savings accounts:
Bank of America: 0.10% on all balances
Wells Fargo: 0.05% on balances up to $25,000
Citi: 0.25% with a [...]

Flagstar Bank has been doing some really strange stuff with its 36-month CDs.
For much of the fall it was promoting quite a good rate on its Web site: 3.00% APY, with a minimum deposit of only $500.
At one point that would have been good enough to top our rankings of the best 36-month certificates of [...]

We usually write about where to find the best CD rates.
But today we’re going to focus on where to find the worst deals.

We’re talking truly wretched rates such as 0.15% APY on a 6-month CD, or 0.25% APY for a 12-month CD.
Those are the kinds of deals you’ll find these days at the nation’s [...]

Are all the “Real Housewives” on Bravo’s reality shows as rich as they seem, or are some living way beyond their means?
We regularly see these outspoken women from Orange County, Calif., New York, New Jersey and Atlanta shoulder the burden of wealth as they frequent only the best shops, restaurants and spas.
But over the past [...]

Hire a contractor — not a home inspector — to examine any house you’re thinking about buying.

You just can’t count on them to tell you what’s wrong with a home because of the three dirty little secrets about the home inspection business:
Dirty Little Secret 1. The great majority of home inspectors depend on real estate [...]

Hybrids almost always cost more than comparable, conventionally powered models.
But the Toyota Camry Hybrid will save enough in gas to recoup that extra cost in well under two years, which makes it an excellent deal.

Indeed, we can’t understand why anyone would buy a Camry without the gas-saving, environment-friendly hybrid powertrain.
Unfortunately, we can’t say the same [...]

Bank of the West is paying a $100 bonus for opening a new checking account.
Although the offer is available nationwide, we wouldn’t recommend it to anyone outside the 20 states where Bank of the West has more than 700 branches.
That’s because it doesn’t provide free use of ATMs at other banks — a great perk [...]

With CD and savings account rates plunging to record lows every week, it may be the time to consider a more lucrative alternative — social or peer-to-peer lending.
This is where you loan money directly to worthy borrowers through a Web site, rather than putting your money in a bank and allowing its loan officers to [...]

You can land a $50 bonus and top rate with Ridgestone Bank’s checking and savings account combo.
Its Momentum Savings account pays 2.50% APY on balances between $2,500 and $50,000.

That beats the best nationally available savings account rate, 2.25% APY from SFGI Direct, and matches the best deals on 24-month CDs.
To qualify for that rate you [...]

A small bank in West Virginia has taken over the top spot in our rankings of the best, nationally available savings accounts.
SFGI Direct is paying 2.25% APY with a minimum deposit of only $500.

SFGI Direct is the online division of Summit Community Bank, headquartered in Moorefield, W.Va., which has branches throughout the state and [...]

Add a new bank to our list of the top-paying, high-yield checking accounts.
It’s Royal Banks of Missouri, a 40-year-old institution with six branches in the St. Louis area.
It’s Majestic Checking Account is offering 4.30% APY on balances up to $25,000.
That’s the second-best rate we know of on a nationally-available checking account, topped only by [...]

If you want to take advantage of the best money market rates you’ll have to give three online banks that have been thoroughly trashed by our readers another chance
AmericaNet Bank, Redneck Bank, and Evantage Bank are all paying 2.0% APY on their “Mega Money Market” accounts.
That’s the best, nationally-available deal since EverBank cut the [...]

Ally Bank lowered its CD rates twice in the past two weeks after the government threatened to withdraw government support from its owner if it paid savers too much.
How much is too much?
A letter from Sandra Thompson, director of the FDIC’s Division of Supervision and Consumer Protection, infers that she doesn’t want to find [...]

It’s a topsy-turvy world when checking accounts are the most lucrative investment around.
Yet that’s the case.
Hundreds of community banks across the country are paying 4% APY or more on high-yield checking accounts at a time when savings accounts, money market accounts and certificates of deposit are paying half that much.
Some banks limit these accounts [...]

If you’d ask us a week ago, we’d have said ShoreBank in Chicago and Heartland Bank Direct in St. Louis had the top-paying savings accounts.
At the time, ShoreBank was paying 2.45% APY and Heartland 2.30% APY.
We aren’t sure any savings account paying less than 3% should be considered a high-yield savings account, but that’s [...]

AmTrust Direct has won lots of attention from Bankaholic over the years.
It continues to have one of the top-paying money market accounts in the country, and back in 2006 we praised the awesome 5.51% it was offering on 6-month CDs.
But the online division of AmTrust Bank in Cleveland is overhyping its current CD rates when [...]

It’s great to have money stashed away to pay for all of those holiday gifts without running up big credit card bills.
That’s the advantage of joining a Christmas Club at your bank or credit union.
You make a deposit every month or sign up for a payroll deduction from every paycheck. You can start [...]

We don’t think anything paying a pathetic 0.10% should be promoted as a “high-yield” savings, checking or money market account.
Yet lots of banks and credit unions are doing that as they cut rates to virtually nothing on accounts that haven’t lived up to their name for months — if they ever did.
We’re talking about you, [...]

Community First Bank of Howard County is offering some competitive CD rates (2.75% for 24 months with a $500 minimum deposit.)
The bank, with three branches in Kokomo, Ind., can afford that because it pays almost nothing on its money market and savings accounts.
How little? Try 0.10%, even on deposits of $500,000 or more.
But what [...]

It pays 0.95% APY whether you invest $1,000, $10,000 or $100,000.
That’s well below the national average of 1.57% for two-year CDs and comes from the latest acquisition of Wells Fargo & Co. — the big San Francisco-based bank that delighted Wall Street this week when it reported earning $3 billion in the first quarter.
The Dow [...]

Here’s why you should never trust your savings to offshore banks.
Millennium Bank, based in St. Vincent and the Grenandines, started advertising suspicously high CD rates back in 2004. And it wasn’t shy about going after the big money, placing ads in glossy magazines aimed at wealthy consumers.
Millennium typically offered 1.5 to 2 percentage points more [...]