The Bank Rates They Are A-Changin’

The Fed has walloped the United States with massive rates cuts of 125 points in a 10-day span on the realization that the U.S. economy is in a recession. The Fed noted the slowdown in the housing market and labor market as contributing to the economic malaise. The prime rate, which banks use as their [...]

So You Want to Help?

We have received a few e-mails recently about how to help support our daily blog. Good to know you don’t blame us personally for the lower interest rates on your investments (although we will take the credit for your lower payments on credit cards and home equity loans). Supporting The Savings Investor is pretty simple. [...]

TD Ameritrade Promotions - 5.30% CDs and $300 cash

TD Ameritrade is running two interesting promotions. The first allows all customers who open a new brokerage account to qualify for a 90-day 5.30% APY CD at TD Bank in their brokerage account with a minimum deposit of $10,000 by February 1, 2008. Read the fine print here.

The second promotion is a $300 cash giveaway [...]

$150 Cash Bonus from California Bank for Opening a Checking Account

Imperial Capital Bank in California is offering a $150 cash reward for new customers who open up a Easy Money Checking account with direct deposit and online bill payment. The minimum balance to open a checking account to possibly earn the $150 cash bonus is $250. The account includes ATM fees waived throughout the [...]

The Fed and Online Bank Rates and Deals

The bad news for online bank investors is that the Fed is very likely to drop rates 25 or 50 points at this week’s meeting, but the good news is that it appears most online banks have already factored in that rate cut into this week’s rates and we don’t expect a large reduction in [...]

Second FDIC Bank Failure of 2008

No real reason for alarm but three weeks into 2008 and we already have two FDIC-insured banks which have failed and been placed in receivership by the FDIC. Douglass National Bank joins Miami Valley Bank as the two bank casualties. The last few years have been very quiet for the FDIC as shown below:
2004 FDIC [...]

IRS Refund E-Mail Scam Circulating the Internet

An e-mail which appears to be an e-mail from the IRS with instructions on how to claim a tax refund is poliferating around the internet. The e-mail appears to be sent from Service@irs.gov with a link to a cloned IRS website. The intent is to steal social security numbers after a visitor completes the refund [...]

College Savings through the Upromise Program

The Upromise program allows registered users at upromise.com to earn cash back for college savings by shopping online at participating vendors. The list of participating companies numbers in the thousands and includes travel companies, real estate companies, restauraunts, grcoerys stores, and retail stores. Cash earned can be deposited directly into a registered 529 plan. The [...]

3 Ideas for Savings Investors - Series I Bonds, Municipal Bonds, Online Bank Rate Deals

The stock market has had a rough start in 2008 with the Dow Jones Industrial Average down 10% for the year with more trouble anticipated. The volatility of the markets has launched a continued flight-to-quality into safer investments just at a time when the rates and yields on those investments are dropping in line with [...]

Great Online Bank Rate Deals on Money Markets, Checking Accounts, Savings Accounts, and CDs

Interest rates have been dropping at banks across the country as the Fed looks likely to lower rates at their next meeting on January 30th if not sooner. Competition among the top online banks has kept the highest-posted rates over 5.00% which is significantly higher than U.S. Treasuries yields, Short-Term U.S. Government Bond Fund Yields, [...]

An Online Bank Delivering High Rates on Deposits

Umbrella Bank is the online division of New South Federal Savings Bank (FDIC# 32276) a 75-year old bank based out of Alabama (See FDIC Report here). Umbrella Bank through their website Umbrellabank.com has been offering deposit rates ranking in the top 1% of all FDIC banks for over 5 years. Customers of UmbrellaBank have reported [...]

Social Investing Sites

Social investing sites give investors a new way to invest their money, as socially-conscious lenders, either through small loans to third-world borrowers (Microfinance) or through peer-to-peer lending (Social Lending). Both types of social investing are aimed at helping entrepeneurs thrive. The sites below have been reviewed by money-rates.com:
Prosper.comProsper has 490,000 members and offers loans from [...]

Investing in 2008

Many predictive models and some trading platforms like intrade.com are rating the probability of a recession in 2008 at greater than 50%. An outlook this for the coming year makes investing safely more of a challenge. When you consider that interest rates have fallen a point since last year and are expected to fall [...]