Sunday, August 10, 2008

Revisiting our online money market interest rates

A friend recently called and asked where to put her emergency cash.

I recommended placing a portion in a local accessible source and the rest in an online money market account (MMA).

This isn't something we've looked into for a while, so I checked out what we receive from countrywide - which has been a high payer historicaly. Currently it's 3.55%.

I then went to bankrate.com to compare. The MMA rates are a bit hard to find, but accessible on the home page. Here's a short cut.

For the moment 3.55% looks fairly competitive. I'm not sure how convenient the mostly local banks who make the top tier are for access, fund transfers, etc....

An interesting point is that Countrywide's offering did not appear until I selected MMA's with 10,000 or greater deposits required to setup the account. Here's the link. Interestingly enough, the top tier high interest payor group stays the same, but the 3.5% tier is very crowded.

One thing to stay away from is the promotional rate group. I'm uncomfortable with large banks that offer seductive short term rates that eventually become less competitive longer term rates. I remember feeling poorly treated by these same banks as they imposed unattractive terms on my business checking accounts.

Regards,
makingourway

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