Thanks to David for sending me this New York Times article about online savings accounts. I really think this market is maturing, especially since Citibank is entering the fold. Here’s an interesting quote:
Unlike credit card users, who freely hop from one product to the next to get a better rate, savings account holders tend to be more loyal, Mr. Newman said. Thus, he said, HSBC Direct does not feel compelled to offer the very highest yield.
This inertia explains HSBC’s drop back to 4.5% and ING’s recent lagging rates. But with no minimums, I’ll be working hard to keep them honest.
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Interesting statement. I guess that is what I needed to help make the decision to move all my money from them to GMAC!
That is exactly what I needed to see to make up my mind also. I have both ING and HSBC. I think I am going to add GMAC to it. I also like their 12 month CD rates. HSBC has been a pain to operate. Does anybody know if I can link GMAC to withdraw money from ING?
Yep, same here, HSBC emptied
I kind of disagree with the loyalty statement. Sometimes it really is convenience. I used to have ING and kept it around for a while. Eventually, I tried to join Emigrant Direct because of its higher rates (that didn’t work because of their issues, so I gave up) and just decided on Citi e-savings (when it was 3.25%) because I’m already a Citibank customer (checking, credit cards). For me, I never put money back into other accounts even when they were 1% higher than Citibank solely because it was just easier to have direct access to my money rather than shifting it around, having to deal with transfers, etc. It had very little to do with loyalty, and I think the fact that people are constantly shifting money around to the highest interest-bearing companies demonstrates that loyalty isn’t always the biggest motivating factor.
Yes. You can pull from ING to GMAC. That is how I moved all my money out of ING to GMAC once the 4.75% rate at ING expired on 4/15. Silly ING. My only complaint with GMAC is that they don’t have paperless statement capability. I have asked and they said they don’t offer that capability.
mc, how did you link them, from whose side? I tried adding ING acct. to my GMAC external acct. list and failed. The acct. verification deposits never came to ING 🙁
I would bet that mc sent a GMAC check to ING, and linked it that way.
No. Never sent a check from GMAC.
It has been six months since I set up all these links so I think this is how I did it: Used ‘Add’ function under ‘Registered Exteral Accounts’ in GMAC. Just need to know the routing number for ING (031176110) and your account number. Think it was that simple. Now maybe GMAC has clamped down on external links like ING did awhile back and I’m just grandfathered in like my link from ING to Emigrant Direct. Which is a no no in ING land since it is not a checking account.
P.S. Don’t think GMAC does any verification deposits like ING does. Could be wrong but I don’t remember any for GMAC linking. Treasury Direct doesn’t send verification deposits for its external links so I don’t think they’re really necessary. There are under the cover transactions in the ACH world to set these things up for verification without deposits being required.
Ha, good thing I didn’t have any money riding on that bet. But seriously, Vlad, the fact that GMAC allows checkwriting should let you link it to ING w/o issues as of right now.
GMAC didn’t use to use trial deposits when I first opened the account. They now use the trial deposits. I also added ING to my account list with GMAC when I first opened, so I don’t know if you can do that now or not.
Good, with all of you pulling money out of HSBC they should be raising the rates soon and I won’t have to… 🙂
Seriously though, with T Bills where they are, why keep substantial amounts of money in savings anyway? I plan on moving all my 0% transfers to six month T Bills in the next couple of weeks.
I did GMAC recently they do 2 trial deposits I linked a bunch of accounts they have taken anywhere from 1 day to 5 days to show up. after that you can move money in a snap! 🙂
This is a little unrelated, but I just came across the Wall Street Journal online, which is free for all for 10 days. No need to subscribe or sign in, and it is full of interesting info on banking, finance, etc. http://online.wsj.com/public/us?