Ally Bank was the first online bank to offer a no-penalty certificate of deposit and now it appears that the idea is catching on. Discover Bank will announce tomorrow that they are making their 12 month CD a no-penalty CD, where you can withdraw your funds should you involuntarily lose your job. All new and renewing account holders will get this benefit (existing account holders won’t, I assume because neither party can change the terms before maturity).

What is a No-Penalty CD? If you read my Certificate of Deposit Zoo post last week, then you’ll know that no-penalty CDs are ones where you can withdraw your deposit before the CD’s maturity date without any interest penalty. Normally a CD will charge you 3-6 months worth of interest to close it early, no-penalty CDs let you close your account.

(click here to continue reading…)

If you look at Ally Bank’s current rates, there appears to be a discrepancy in the way they’ve structured their rates. I tweeted about this last week and it appears the difference in rates has persisted through a recent rate drop, making it doubly curious. Let me explain what I mean.

As of today (June 22, 2009), here are the current rates of several of their products:

• Traditional 9-month CD: 1.75% APY
• No-Penalty 9-month CD: 2.15% APY
• Online Savings Account: 2.00% APY

Two things surprise me:

1. A traditional CD should never have a lower yield than a no-penalty CD of the same maturity. With a no-penalty CD, you have the right to close the CD before the maturity period without penalty. The bank can’t close it. You should be paying, through a discount on the interest rate, for that flexibility. When the no-penalty CD first debuted, its interest rate was a tenth of a percent lower than the traditional CD’s rate.
2. The no-penalty 9-month CD with a higher yield than the online savings account represents an opportunity. We’re in a period when rates on savings accounts and CDs are dropping. However, should rates ever make a turn and start rising, being locked into a CD might be bad news. However, with a no-penalty CD, I can close at anytime so the risk is minimal! There is no reason why someone should keep their funds in an online savings account when the same exact bank is offering a no-penalty CD option with a higher interest rate.

This morning I transferred all my funds from my Ally Bank online savings account into the 9-month no-penalty CD to get that extra 0.15% APY. If the two accounts weren’t at the same bank, I wouldn’t have done it because the transfer time would’ve cost me interest. However, anytime someone is willing to give me a $2 bill in return for a $1, I take it.

Is there something I’m missing?

For the longest time I thought a certificate of deposit came in one flavor – vanilla. I deposit some money into a CD, I wait until it matures, and then I decide whether I want to put it back in or do something else. Online banks offer better rates than traditional and you can get fancy by creating a CD ladder, but at the core a CD was a CD was a CD. Then I learned about Ally Bank’s no-penalty CD that lets you close a CD before its maturity without losing interest. OK, that was interesting, but it wasn’t all that exciting.

Then today, I read this Bankrate article about the different types of CDs and was surprised at all the options. I guess I had heard about several of them in the past but dismissed them as hokey (callable CDs? I’ve heard of callable bonds but never CDs). I think some of them are clever just to be clever (and so they can list more rates?) but overall it’s kind of a dry read… so I tried to make it a little more interesting.

How about we take a visit to the Certificate of Deposit Zoo?

(click here to continue reading…)

I’ve had a Palm Treo for almost two years and one of the nice things about having a smartphone is that it gives me the ability to go online whenever I have cell service. It’s saved my butt on more than one occasion.

With the internet at my fingertips, one thing I’ve done more often is check my banking information through the phone’s web browser. It’s a quick way to see if checks have cleared without calling the bank and navigating the painful IVR systems. However, I’ve always done this without much concern for security.

(click here to continue reading…)

This is comprehensive review of the best online banks, specifically those with a high interest savings account and high yield savings accounts available (high interest refers to the interest rate). Given the recent economic uncertainty, interest rates have come down from their earlier highs and so “high yield” is more a relative term than an absolute one. Gone are the days of 5% and 6% APYs, today the best ones are in the 2-3% range. While not incredible, they are certainly better than the 0% your local bank is likely giving you on your savings accounts nowadays. In this post, Everbank, Ally Bank, E*Trade, HSBC Direct and WTDirect are given brief looks to see how strong they are in the current rate environment.

(click here to continue reading…)

(Updated 5/21) In the world of banking products, you are always trading off interest rate for flexibility. Typically the higher the interest rate, the less flexible the account. Take CD rates for example, they are often higher than savings accounts and they are less flexible. You decide how long you’re willing to keep your money locked up and then pick a bank that offers the best rate for that term. If you wish to get your money early, you pay penalty. On the other end are checking accounts. Checking accounts have the worst interest rates but offer the most flexibility. You can get your cash whenever you want it, write as many checks as you’d like, and visit your own ATM without penalty. For that flexibility, you earn very little, if any, interest.

Where does that leave money market accounts?

(click here to continue reading…)

I received an email earlier this week from Tomas, asking what daily compounding meant, and I thought it would best be answered with a video post. The video discusses, in very basic terms, what compounding is as well as two common acronyms you see when talking interest rates: APR and APY.

I created an APR to APY (and back) Calculator a while back and it makes it easy to compute the two.

Please let me know what you think!

Did you watch the 60 Minutes segment about the FDIC seizing a bank? If you were as fascinated with the process as I was, I have a treat for you. This American Life’s 377th Episode, Scenes From a Recession [download], features the FDIC seizing Bank of Clark County, based in Vancouver, Washington, and selling them to Umpqua Bank back in January.

(click here to continue reading…)

Banks offer a lot of services and features. You probably know most of the popular ones. Heck, you probably know most of the not so popular ones. However, I am pretty certain that there is at least one thing on the follow list that you didn’t know about before. And if I’m wrong, I invite you to look at these 7 Unwritten and Often Forgotten Credit Card Secrets, and hopefully between the two you’ll learn something new that will save you some money in these difficult times.

(click here to continue reading…)

This episode of the Bargaineering VideoCast will discuss a concept I call Bank Account Firewalls.

ING Direct no longer has the top interest rate among online banks but no other bank makes it easier for you to start new accounts. They are the ideal candidate for a bank account firewall because of this simplicity but you can use any account at any bank.