I initiated a new recurring bank account transfer from my Wachovia checking account (my basic operating account) to my ING Direct savings account. As I can’t schedule a daily recurring transfer of $5, I added a weekly $35 transfer. Hopefully this will force me to tighten up my spending a little bit and provide me with a little more savings.
I also need to resume saving 10% of my “day job” paycheck and earmark that amount for emergency savings. In fact, I should start doing the same for all other income I earn. So far, my “extra income” is all deposited into another “subaccount” at ING Direct. I rarely touch it, saving as much as possible to reinvest into the projects that generate the income. Perhaps I should start “paying myself” from this income.
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I’m a little surprised that you maintain a “best banking rates” page, yet choose to use the bank with the worst rate. ING has the easiest-to-use website (HSBC and Virtual Bank are particularly painful), but their rates are consistently about a half point less than the others.
That half point of lost interest won’t make a huge difference for most people, but not choosing the higher rate seems like throwing away easy free money.
That’s a good observation. I have savings at ING Direct and Emigrant Direct, and when I opened each account, it was when that particular bank had the highest rate. It’s not a lot of cash, so the quarter point interest I might gain by jumping around whenever one bank leapfrogs anouther is not worth it to me.
If a different bank is a clear winner after another six months, I might consider changing, or at least depositing new funds there. I don’t want to keep too much money in these types of accounts because they barely keep up with inflation after taxes.