Comments on: A Bit o' Interest & Saving on Checking Account Fees

By: Angie

Angie — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 11:36:55 +0000

I live in Wisconsin and bank at WCCU, some of the credit unions in Wisconsin have started “green” checking accounts with great perks. I’m earning 4.05% on my checking account balance from $.01 to $30,000. All I have to do is use my debit card as a non-pin based transaction 10 times per month, have one automatic deposit or withdrawal each month, and log into online banking once per month. The green part is that you do not receive a monthly statement. Who needs one anyways these days? I love it, I’ve been getting about 40 bucks a month since May on my regular checking and dont’ need to transfer money back and forth from savings. This is month four I’ve earned the 4.05%. An extra $160 for not doing much of anything, how great is that?

By: edward

edward — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 06:19:08 +0000

ING Direct’s customer service is OUTSTANDING! They consistently do a good job making things easy.

By: Jim

Jim — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 00:14:32 +0000

I have been using ING for a couple of years now and started the Electric Orange about 6 months ago. Every payday I transfer money from my regular checking account (required by ING) into ING savings. Then the day before my bills are due, I transfer from ING savings to ING checking (instantaneous). It’s all automated, and YNAB’s scheduler keeps it up to date for me. Works great!

By: Pam

Pam — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:48:25 +0000

I opened an ING savings account back in October of ’08 when I started to pay serious attention to my budget and expenses during the economic downturn…and I’ve never looked back. I love them. The customer service is awesome, it’s incredibly easy to set up accounts, and their interest rates are so much better than my brick and mortar credit union. I also love their saving philosophy. It fits perfectly with the YNAB philosophy. I followed Jessie’s advice and set up separate savings account funds for Christmas, car repairs, a new laptop, etc. and I named them and set up auto transfers. It’s so seemless, i sometimes forget I have them!

By: Mary

Mary — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:29:24 +0000

This sounds really good. We have been with our credit union for many years but am definitely considering this. Would keep our credit union account open though just in case and due to the fact that my dh feels a bit uncomfortable about online anks and at this time does not want to set up direct deposit to one. He is willing to give it a try though if it will save us money.

By: Michael Mangus

Michael Mangus — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 23:18:51 +0000

I’ve used ING savings account since 2005 and opened an Electric Orange account on May, 2008. I changed all my bills, direct deposit, and any ACH payments to automatically draft. It served me well, but I started to come across smaller banks offering Reward Checking accounts that had interest rates close or higher than CD’s. After a lot of reviewing I opened up an Charter TurboChecking account in August, 2008. It allowed me to open the account online (out of state), which sent me documents in the mail to finalize and I than used ING direct to actually fund the opening balance. It offered 6% APY versus ING’s .25% APY, but has slowly been lowered to 4% APY, which is still extremely impressive. It also provides free access to ATM’s nationwide that is credited back at statements end when requirements are met. You can review the account at: http://tiny.cc/EV4BV. You can find many more by googling Rewards Checking. I have had great service and enjoy the benefits. I still use Electric Orange to link my Chase local account and to link the Charter account in New Mexico. ACH transfers from ING to other banks is completely free, but takes like 2 to 3 days for the transfer. So I still have my direct deposit go to ING and have automated transfers set to send to branch. So basically I use chase to just deposit any gift money, rebates, or whatever. I use ING solely to transfer money around. I use Charter for its high yield interest bearing and thanks to YNAB’s 1 month cushion 2 or 3 days for money being transferred is not even a big deal. It has worked great for me. Just more for you to think about when you get accustomed to ING direct.

By: Jen

Jen — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:15:10 +0000

I have an ING savings account just for my real estate taxes, so I am never scrambling to come up with the money at the last minute. I have $25 a week automatically withdrawn– once you get used to it being out of your checking, you won’t even miss it. If I happen to have a bit of extra money in my checking, I will only transfer the balance needed to make the tax payment out of the ING account, and leave the remainder in. Then I am ahead of the game for the next tax payment.

By: Matt Jabs

Matt Jabs — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 15:58:46 +0000

I am a HUGE fan of ING Direct for both checking and savings. What I did to get around the “deposit” issue was to direct deposit my salary check, and to open an account w/a local brick & mortar credit union and link it to my ING account.

Works like a charm… :-)

By: noelnjen

noelnjen — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:05:31 +0000

We have ING Savings and Electric Orange accounts as well. One thing to be careful of as you move money back and forth, you are limited to 6 transfers out of your Savings account per month.

This has not been a problem for us, but it is something to watch.

By: Lisa Clemmer

Lisa Clemmer — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 11:58:39 +0000

We’ve been using E-trade for quite a few years. Since we don’t have a large “savings” this has worked very well for us with a much higher interest rate than a regular savings account at our bank. We pay many of our bills directly through our physical bank’s bill pay service.