Update 2/4/25: Rate is now 4% (HT: Betelgeuse)
Offer at a glance
- Interest Rate: 5.00%
- Maximum Balance:Â $1,000 (0.10% on balances over $1,000)
- Availability:Â Nationwide (with an $8 membership to the Financial Fitness Association)
- Additional requirements:Â Must be younger than 18 years of age [limit one per child]
- Direct deposit required:Â No
- Hard/soft pull:Â Soft in my experience and recent DPs (an older Hard DP)
- ChexSystems: Positive DPs (at least for checking, maybe not for savings only)
- Credit card funding: None
- Monthly fees:Â None
- Insured:Â NCUA
The Offer
The First Tech FCU Start Up Savings Account offers children 5.0% APY on balances up to $1,000
The Fine Print
- First Tech Membership required ($5 minimum balance)
- No monthly account maintenance fees
- Limit one per child
- Monthly dividends
My Experience
- I was able to get the process started with a call to First Tech and then was able to complete the documentation electronically; no need to go to a physical branch which made the process relatively quick and convenient.
- When opening Start Up Savings accounts for my kids, I became a member of the credit union too. This has made it easier to manage their accounts as all the accounts are available from my login. But technically (from verbiage in the application process), while an adult needs to be a joint owner on the account that adult may not need to be a member of First Tech [“Although a First Tech membership is not required, we would like to invite you to become a member…”].
- To qualify for membership I joined the Financial Fitness Association with an $8 PayPal payment
Our Verdict
A smaller deal given the low balance cap and the age restriction.
But I’ve found these sorts of deals (capped deals at profitable credit unions) have proven fairly durable – so the initial time and effort to setup an account is often paid back over many years [but there’s no guarantee that this deal will stick around].
It also feels good to set the kids up with a low risk above market rate of return for their savings (though I guess anything can happen with that helicopter money falling down).
We’ve collected a number of kids savings account deals in this post, but it could be more valuable to start with Chuck’s list of Best High Yield Savings Accounts (many of which are also available to a financial institution’s youngest members).
First Tech has offered other promotions in the past, and even had a history with manufactured spenders (or at least so they say?) [MPD, M2M] [I wouldn’t know about the present, I can’t even keep up with the past 🙂 ].
All the Best!
