As mentioned by readers. GMAC Bank MM Savings at 4.30% – FDIC Insured, $500 minimum to open and maintain to avoid fees, ATM Card, limited check writing. I don’t have an account with them currently, let’s hope others move to match.
GMAC Bank paying 4.30% APY
Posted on December 10, 2005 // 27 Comments
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Has anyone been able to successfully open an account here? I keep getting the “We could not process your request” error. Then it starts talking about contacing the credit bureaus for more information. My FICO score is 780 so I couldn’t imagine that it would be a credit issue.
4.3% versus %4.0 (ED) is about $30/year. A little more with compounding. Then there’s the taxes on this. Still money is money. What no opening bonus?
While 0.3% looks nice, is it enough to make the switch from EmigrantDirect? I assume (hope) that ED will be rasing their rates given that they aren’t the highest anymore. If GMAC provided a sign-up bonus, I am sure more people would jump at the offer.
Neo
It may only be “$30/year” for a $1000, but it adds up significantly when you multiply by 10.
Remember, the FOMC meeting is Dev. 13th and the Fed is likely to raise 25 basis points.
Since Presidential and ED did not raise since the last increase and there have been a lot of banks increasing above 4% APY, I suspect they will be raising at least to 4.25% and maybe 4.5% if they expect to retain their deposits.
The $30/year is for $10,000 not $1,000. Left that out of previous post. Saw some good reviews of this bank on fatwallet.com and opened with the minimum deposit of $500. Account immediately setup and available. What a change from ED. First 50 checks are free. ATM card and they pick up foreign ATM charges up to $6/month. There’s still paper work to sign and send back and then they forward the checks and ATM/VISA debit card. I’ve never wanted/needed the check/ATM feature for this type of account but finally decided it can’t hurt. In they go into the safe until they’re ever needed.
I just setup this account less than an hour ago and already have all my external accounts linked to my new GMAC account. They will link checking, savings, and RC accounts. There doesn’t seem to be a limit to the number of accounts you can externally link either. What a change from ED and ING. Funded with an electronic transfer and it already shows in the ‘Pending Transfers’ list. So far I give them high marks.
MC, both banks use APY, which takes compounding into consideration. On $1k, 4.0% is $40 and 4.3% is $43 a year. At 1k diff is $3, at 100k diff is $300. Rather, it is best to look at how much you lose in transition.
Let’s say you lose 3 days worth of interest in the transition. 4.0%/365 * 3 = ~.0328% lost. That is .0328/.3 = .1095 of yearly extra gain at GMMAC. .1095 * 365 = ~40. Meaning, you will need around 40 days at GMMAC to recover the lost interest at 4.0% bank and that’s if your transfer takes only 3 days. If you expect your bank to match the rates before that 40 days, you shouldn’t switch.
Opening an account could take a while, it’s best to open the account with the minimum ($500 here) and then move bulk of your money in.
mc, you’re right, I left out that extra zero.
LSD, have you had experience with the GMAC transfer? If so, do they really hold up your money for 3 days without paying interest? It seems like HSBC does this with their transfers which is why I don’t prefer their account. ED seems very good about transfers in this regard. With ED, the funds are debited and credited the same day.
The lost in transition is only true if you’re moving money from one savings to another. A lot of my transfers are out of checking into savings and vice versa. I use the cash flow forecasting option of MS Money to move excess funds and those not needed until the bills come due into these types of accounts and transfer when needed. Something corporations do daily but not usually worth the hassle for individuals. At best I do this once or twice a month. But now that I’m utilizing Jonathan’s 0% APR approach for credit card purchases there’s a lot more money to move to gain interest. The higher the rate the better since the funds won’t be needed for eleven months.
Let me elaborate:
Transfers I have done:
External account to ED: money is debited and credited the same day so no interest is lost.
External account to HSBC: money is debited but not credited until the 3rd day so 2 days of interest are lost.
External account to GMAC: ? (Does anyone know?) If it’s like ED, then I will open an account.
Aaron,
Setup the account today 12/10 and funded externally from a checking account. Transfer is set for the 13th. Since today is a Saturday, I’m guessing the transfer will be run through their EFT system on Monday and be sent out for ‘clearing’ sometime Monday and I will see the debit in the checking account first thing Tuesday morning. Will post when this gets posted to my GMAC account. Hopefully, someone else will answer you question before me. Check fatwallet.com for other experiences regarding GMAC. Just search for ‘GMAC’ in the thread title.
So here is a thought:
Since we get an ATM/Visa Debit card with this account, how about just doing the 0% BT’s (that free money we all love from the various credit cards) directly to the Visa account number. When you see the credit on the Visa account, can you just call GMAC and ask them to put it in the MM account. Am I missing anything here? Seems like a slam dunk.
Food for thought. 🙂
Brent – Good idea, but I have yet to hear about a successful attempt to balance transfer to a Check/Debit Card. Either the bank will reject it, or the original card issuer will not allow it. However, if someone would like to try, go for it!
I may try this for the common good with my Citi Professional card if I decide to use the balance transfer. =)
VISA in addition to being a credit card organization also does ACH clearing functions. My guess is that this is not a credit card account but rather ACH debits that are funneled through VISA for clearing. I used to support an IT EFT (ACH) application but it’s been awhile so this is my best guess. That’s why they distinguish between credit and debit cards.
I’ve read over at Fatwallet people having problems doing the balance transfer to “Check card” method. It’s too bad not every institution gives the free checks like Citi.
mc, I’ll be interested in your update, thanks.
Does anyone know what kind of credit pull GMAC does? I’ve signed up for a few cards lately and don’t really want another hard pull on my report.
Also, what’s the difference between a regular savings account and a MM savings account? Is there any practical difference?
FatWallet thead seemed to indicate GMAC was a soft pull.
MM savings accounts have restrictions. 6 withdrawals a month. See definitions/articles on bankrate.com.
ING to ED transfers were a day of lost interest. Debited in ING one day, credited in ED next day. Just don’t move the money on a Friday. You lose three days interest that way. So you don’t have to lose interest in chasing the best rate. Especially if they have push/pull for savings like ING HAD it’s not too long to recover. GMAC has push/pull to savings, just need to find out the time to credit.
I waited for ING to raise their rates before switching to ED and then it was only a quarter point. Now ING is .55% behind GMAC and .25% behind ED and there’s another rate hike on Tuesday. We’ll see who raises rates and how fast.
CapitalOne just matched 4% 🙂
For Aaron,
As I anticipated, the debit for the initial setup hit the checking account today. Checked GMAC and it shows a credit dated today. The balance is there but the funds are not available as yes as would be expected. Interest is showing the lower tier rate of 4.11% not 4.21%. They have a lower rate if you’re under $500. Funded for that amount so we will see when the rate changes and the funds become available. Will post.
I wouldn’t trust GMAC with anything. I’ve dealt with GMAC Bank face to face–their ATM ate $130 of my money over a month ago and they’ve made zero effort to fix it. They are an uncaring, incompetent bunch. I wouldn’t trust them with my piggy bank funds, and even if it’s guaranteed yield…I try not to deal with twits.
Speaking of opening accounts, what does anyone know about the MetLife Money Market Account? I see they are running a promotion until the end of the year — if you deposit at least $5000, it pays 3.50% APY and they have a $50 sign-up bonus if you maintain this minimum balance for 90 days.
link
Doing a rate comparison to EmigrantDirect, you would lose only $6 in interest by moving the $5000 to MetLife but you then get the $50 bonus.
Thoughts?
Neo
mc,
Thanks for the update. I think I’ll open it up and try out some transfers while waiting to see if ED raises their rates.
Aaron,
After my intial funding of $500 was processed I moved up to the 4.21% tier (>$500) from 4.11% (
Got my account opening kit today 12/15. Four business days since account setup. Pretty good. All it has in it are some deposit forms and a signature form to send back in order to get the checks and some info on funding your account.
My non-funding transfer initiated on 12/14, credited to my GMAC account on 12/15, and the debit side showed up today 12/16 in the checking account.
So far so good with this bank. Much quicker than the account opening with ED – which was like two weeks. Don’t remember how long to establish my ING account.
One minor negative. GMAC Bank does not offer the option to shut off the sending of paper monthly statments. Had to email customer service to find out. Answer was ‘WE DO NOT OFFER THAT OPTION’. To the good, they said they would respond to my inquiry in one business day and they did. Find it odd that on online bank still mails paper statements. For ING and Emigrant that’s not even an issue.
GMAC raised their rates for accounts with a minimum balance of $500 to 4.60% effective 2/25/06. Your ‘is it worth it to switch’ calculator was linked in a thread in fatwallet today.
DO NOT BANK WITH GMAC BANK. I deposited a substantial amount of money with them only to have them refuse to honor one of my checks because they decided (arbitrarily) that the signature on the check did not match what they had on record. They did not bother to call me or ask me about the check and their refusal caused me serious harm as I was transferring money to my checking account and subsequently had a number of checks bounce.
The galling part is that it took them days to admit what they did, and they spent days trying to blame my other bank. Only when I got my other bank involved did they confess to what they did. They act without any consideration for the customer.