Best Interest Rates?
 

Hi,

We're moving to the US this Spring from the UK. We've luckily sold our home, and since we bank with HSBC, we've moved the equity over to our US bank account which HSBC had set up for us.

We will be travelling through the summer, and as such we will not be buying a house most likely until at least the end of the year, so the question is: where is the best place for us to hold this amount of cash until we need it for a home purchase? At the moment, its earning a pitiful interest rate with HSBC and I'm sure there's somewhere we can put it where it would get a better interest rate.

Should add we are looking for something as near zero risk as possible - so not stocks, bonds, or pork bellies!

Been looking into short term (3 or 6 month) CD's - is that the right route?

All help appreciated!

Cheers
marzipan71

Re: Best Interest Rates?
 

Welcome to BE.

Have a look down the page, question was asked just yesterday.

Re: Best Interest Rates?
 

While interest rates in the US are so appallingly low, an interesting alternative is BankDirect, and online bank that will effectively pay you interest in American Airlines miles instead. They have healthy sign-up bonuses too - and depending on your likely travel habits the miles earned can easily exceed the value of the crappy interest rate gained elsewhere. Of course, AA redemptions depend on award availability - which is there but popular too - so people should go into this with their eyes open, and ideally some prior understanding of the workings of airline FF programmes.

Re: Best Interest Rates?
 

Hi All,

Thanks for the welcome! Yes I saw that a question was asked about best interest rates for savings accounts etc. My question is kinda different - I'm asking about how to maximise a rate for the large lump sum that we are holding from the equity from our UK house (several hundred thousand US dollars).

I'm interested if anyone had any experiences with 3 or 6 month CD's, and whether better interest rates were paid for these compared with regular savings accounts; or whether there are other short-term instruments (bonds etc?) we could use that have near-zero downside risk...? As I mentioned, we have the money sitting there earning practically nothing, and I would have thought in the current climate we could get a better return.

Appreciate the point about airmiles - might be something to look into, as the current interest rate won't give us more than a flight with SouthWest at the moment!

Thanks for all your help! :)

Cheers
marzipan71

Re: Best Interest Rates?
 

From what you're saying, I think short term CD's are worth looking at. The money is safe (open several or with spouse as co-owner if you are going to breach FDIC limits) and you should be able to get slightly higher than savings rates if you shop around. Having said that, I just checked the current rates at Wells Fargo and they were were pretty derisory 0.05% for savings, 0.20% as a special offer for an 11 month CD. Is the extra 0.15% worth tying the cash up for 3 months....only you can say that.......Needed to go to 4+ years to get over 1%:thumbdown:

Re: Best Interest Rates?
 

We have left our house equity in the UK for now. Back there we could readily find ~3% 1 year saving bonds and I expect the rates to go up next year.
Also when we emigrated the rate was around 1.50 dollars to the pound; yesterday I moved money across at 1.62 which is 8% better

Also, the USA housing market is still falling and will continue to do so the rest of this year and who knows for how much longer. I'm in no hurry to lose money!

Re: Best Interest Rates?
 

Ally has 1.23% for a 12-month CD or 0.6% for a 3-month


https://www.ally.com/bank/high-yield...-2A#tabs=rates

Re: Best Interest Rates?
 

Re: Best Interest Rates?
 

Another one to try - some of these checking accounts are paying big interest if you meet the requirements....top one in our area is 3.25% on balances 0-250k, as long as you make 20 debit card purchases a month...


www.checkingfinder.com

Re: Best Interest Rates?
 

I have this Union Bank Preferred Savings 1.01% with over 10K$

https://www.unionbank.com/personal-b...ngs/index.jsp#


UnionBanCal Corporation is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd., which is a subsidiary of Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group, Inc. Union Bank is a proud member of the Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG, NYSE:MTU), one of the world's largest financial organizations.

https://www.unionbank.com/global/abo...file/index.jsp