Personal Finance Blog By MoneyRates - Money Market Accounts
President Obama's jobs program a mixed bag for savings accounts and money market rates
September 8, 2010
Find out what President Obama's jobs program might mean to the economy -- and to you.
Unemployment, underemployment and interest rates
August 17, 2010
If you think unemployment is bad, consider the number of people who are underemployed. By Gallup's reckoning almost one in five people -- 18.3 percent of Americans -- either don't have jobs or are working part-time and want full-time employment as of mid-August. The research outfit's numbers are based on on more than 15,000 phone [...]
Emergency savings accounts need a boost, study finds
July 27, 2010
About a quarter of Americans think the economy and their personal financial situations will be worse this year than last year, according to The 2010 MetLife Study of the American Dream released July 26. That sounds pretty grim, considering how bad the last couple of years have been. But the results actually show significant improvement [...]
FDIC Warns of Bogus E-Mail
May 5, 2010
At the end of last week, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) issued a consumer alert warning of a bogus e-mail purporting to be from the FDIC. The e-mail offers recipients $50 for participating in a survey, and asks them to click on a link to a web site. The FDIC alert states that the [...]
Savings Investors Are "Collateral Damage," Says Professor
May 1, 2010
Professor Alan Blinder of Princeton University gave quite a performance on Wednesday morning on CNBC--so standout was this performance, in fact, that many savings investors probably desired, at least momentarily, to jump through the television and punch this fine gentleman in the nose. The debate on Wednesday was about whether or not the Federal Reserve should [...]
Big Banks: What Are They Good For?
April 30, 2010
The obvious answer to the above headline, if you're a savings investor, is: big banks are good for giving savings investors extremely low interest rates on savings accounts, CDs, and money market accounts. But there's a larger, less flippant question here about the large banks, those being Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Chase, and Citigroup. This [...]
Bond Rates, Bank Rates, and Safe Money
April 6, 2010
Low bank rates, especially on CDs, are being used by financial product salespeople to sell other, riskier investments, such as stocks and bonds. Wait a second. Bonds are risky? Not necessarily risky, no, but bonds are by no means the "safe haven" that many savings investors suppose--and many salespeople propose. In fact, it's entirely possible that there is [...]
The Latest Import from Asia: Responsible Banking?
February 22, 2010
Last week, China raised its reserve requirement ratio for large banks. The move was noteworthy because it is a tactic designed to slow growth -- something it's hard to imagine U.S. policymakers doing. However, China's action may be an example of how policymakers can lead rather than follow. According to a New York Times story, China's [...]
The Fed's Plan to Stop Inflation: What It Means to CD Values
February 11, 2010
Conservative investors who hold money in CDs, money market accounts, or savings accounts may feel like they're between a rock and a hard place: They by all means want higher interest rates on those deposit accounts, but they also are worried about the poor economic conditions of the country as a whole. The basic fear underlying these [...]
Why Bother With a Money Market Account?
February 9, 2010
As noted by J.D. over at GetRichSlowly.org, money market accounts are often not very well-understood. For some savers, the question arises in a quite blunt format: "Why should I bother with a money market account?" Especially for people who already have a savings account and a checking account, a money market account can seem like an extra [...]
