Bluegrass Lass

You had to pay $10.95 a month just to spend your own money? I'd keep it under the mattress first, before I paid that.

We are at US Bank now, and so far we've not paid a dime in fees. If that ever changes, we'll move elsewhere. I refuse to pay any fees to access my own money.

Michael

Usually I'm on top of financial things but I didn't realize that the local banks and credit unions were paying such high interest rates.

I suspect they are making their money through the required 10-15 monthly debit card purchases probably through Visa or MasterCard where they earn a nice chunk of money for each transaction.

http://www.money-rates.com/rewardsch...htm#fill-table

robin1234

Yes, we had to change our behavior in one respect; using the debit card for purchases (which we'd never done before.) We'd always used the credit card as much as possible because of the cash rewards. Now we do the minimum number of debit card transactions to earn the higher interest rate.

deng890

My girlfriend has BofA and although she doesn't get charged many fees when using it domestically, she gets totally screwed when we travel abroad. I was shocked to find that not only does BofA charge well above the International Transaction % that Visa charges (because they can), but also charges $5 for using a non approved ATM abroad (again, just because they can!)!
We usually end up making most charges on my Credit Union cards, which has no intl. transaction fees above what Visa charges, and zero ATM fees.

I totally agree with you about Canadian banks. I studied abroad in Quebec for a semester, and while I loved my time in Canada, I couldn't stand Canadian banks. I had to make an appointment to open a simple checking account, and then had to provide very detailed documentation as to my student status and # of classes taken in order to get RBC's "promotional" offer of $5 a month checking, with 20 ATM transactions! Whoop dee doo! I opened it but the servicing was so bad and inflexible that I just ended up using my US account and paying rent in cash.

TimNiceBut

Because the TBTF banks can borrow from the Fed's discount window for almost free, so they're offering similar rates or even less than what they have to pay for savings accounts, then go buy Treasuries with the borrowed money and hey, profit.

There are a couple of savings accounts that pay more (I've got one with Sallie Mae paying a little over 1%, Amex has one in the same ballpark) plus as mentioned there are the reward checking accounts, too.

Compared to the UK, savings accounts don't seem to be quite as good a deal as, say a reward checking account as you further limits as to what you can do with it (like 3 transfers out max per month, a rule I recently fell foul of).

Michael

Normally not. Generally borrowing from the discount window is available for overnight lending and typically has a maximum time of 30 days.

http://www.frbdiscountwindow.org/dis...lID=43#primary

dunroving

High interest on savings accounts in the UK is a thing of the past. Most interest rates are preceded by a decimal point. Higher rates are only available by tying in your money for several years (I guess that is similar to a CD in the States?)