Update 4/3/20: Lowered to 2.5%
Offer at a glance
- Interest Rate: 4.00% APY
- Minimum Balance: $5,000
- Maximum Balance: $15,000
- Availability: NH, parts of Maine
- Direct deposit required: Yes
- Additional requirements: Yes, see below
- Hard/soft pull: Soft pull
- Credit card funding: Yes, up to $1,000 per account (e.g savings & checking = $2,000)
- Monthly fees: Waived with $5k balance
- Household limit: None mentioned
- Insured: NCUA
The Offer
- Northeast Credit Union offers a 4% APY rate on their Elite Checking account on balances up to $15,000.
Note there is a minimum balance of $5,000 to be eligible for the 4% rate.
The following qualifications are necessary for the 4% rate and to waive the monthly fee:
- Get a direct deposit
- Signup for e-statements
- Minimum of 20 debit purchases per month
- Minimum average daily balance of $5,000
Credit Union Membership
The following people are eligible to become a member of Northeast Credit Union:
- Live, work, worship, or attend school in New Hampshire or in Southern York county, Maine
- Live within a 30-mile radius of a branch location
- Have a family member who belongs to Northeast Credit Union
- Work at one of over 75 affiliated companies
Avoiding Fees
Note that this account is different than most rewards checking in that it requires a $5,000 balance to waive the monthly fee. It’s mainly worth doing this deal if you’re sure you’ll have at least $5,000 in the account at all times to waive the fee.
Our Verdict
For those in the target area, this is one of the best high-interest account options since most alternatives have more difficult requirements or lower limits. Hopefully, there isn’t a hard pull for signup, let us know if you try.
We’ll add this to our list of Best High Interest Savings Accounts – check there for additional options.
Hat tip to Depositaccounts
I just got an email update from them that the 2.5% APY is only for the $5,000 – $15,000 amount (so the first $0 – $4,999 is 0% APY). They tried to claim this was a “glitch in the system” even though the 4% (and then 2.5%) has always been on the full $15,000.
Either way, according to my statement close interest from last month, this is effectively a 1.65% APY account now. (It says 1.65% interest in the dividends received, instead of the previous 4% or 2.5%).
Yes, you do get 2.5% on $10,000 if you have $15,000 in the account, but the opportunity cost of having to maintain $5,000 just to get any interest should probably be factored in.
Still a fine account and hopefully the interest rate goes back up in the future, but as of now the effective APY has dropped like most accounts of this type have been doing.
This has since been reverted back for whatever reason, and is also updated on their rates page (the full $15,000 gets 2.5% as long as all requirements are met).
They also went back in and added the dividends I should’ve gotten despite their mention of a glitch, so that’s nice (just $10, but still appreciated).
i got this email too, wasnt sure what it meant since they have always done interest on the whole balance up to 15k. not sure what happened
This has now been lowered as of April 1st. It’s only 2.5% APY now. Maybe still worth it, but definitely not as good as it was.
Is there a minimum amount, that is acceptable for the direct deposit? Would $20 every month be enough?
Is there a minimum amount, that the direct deposit needs to be? Would $20 each month work?
Thinking that if I have this account-do i have to set up DD or can I toss money out of Premier members?
For the cc funding – i left the application before i went through with the funding (decided to do it another day to extend the float period), forgot which part i was at, but they had saved my credit card information without me actually funding the account. They called me up to ask if there is any issues. Found out that there’s no hard limit on the amount funded on the phone as she said she could do any amount. I asked if 5000 was ok and she said yes. Went with 2000 due to float issues.
venmo works for the DD requirement
thanks for posting, that’s the data point i was looking for (non payroll). i will try venmo as well
It’s extra work, but if you’re hard up for a DD source then you may want to look into Amazon’s MTurk / Amazon Pay. Basically do a few short surveys on MTurk for a couple bucks, transfer it into your Amazon Pay account, and then withdraw that into your bank account. YMMV but it works as a DD for many banks, which is fairly legit consider you’re actually working to make the money.
Will also end up with a 1099 at the end of the year and have to pay taxes on the money you make on MTurk, though. Should be negligible if you’re only doing it for bank account recurring DD purposes.
cool thanks did not know about that
anybody use an ACH transfer method to successfully meet the direct deposit requirement?
I tried but it didnt seem to work, thankfully we have ADP at work for direct deposit so I can take 20 bucks out of each pay check to fund meet the requirement
Thanks. Do you have a negative data point for the method you tried? Also what do you use to satisfy the 20 debit transactions?
I paid an electric bill which met the requirements of CCU bank for ACH, but that did not seem to work for NECU, I also tried venmo transfer to bank which i believe worked in CCU but I cant remember, this did not work with NECU.
As for the 20debit transactions, same with CCU, i wrote an automated script to buy 20x $.50 giftcards on amazon, and i do this once a month
Will only pay 4% rate on the first $10k beyond the $5k min. balance
Can you clarify? So it pays 4% on $0-$15,000 or $5,000-$15,000? like if you have $15,000 in there and meet the requirements, you’ll get the 4% on that full $15,000 right?
I’ve been getting 4% on the full $15k. I’m not sure what the other person is talking about.
It is based on the amount of days in the month, as usual, so you won’t always get the exact same amount every month, but it’s definitely 4% on the full $15k.
I can confirm I was able to fund 2000 on a credit card upon opening the account. YMMV but the representative was able to do 1000 in checking and 1000 in savings, which you can then balance out for the elite checking.
I can also confirm the $2000 showed up as purchases on the citi double cash
Sorry for the dumb question, but are you saying you are paying $2,000 to this 4% interest account from your citi double cash card so that you can get the 2% cash back bonus? Could you do this every month so as to sort of get bonuses twice, once through citi and once through the 4% account?
no, you have the option for an intial funding from credit card, and rather than 1000 total, i was able to do 1000 for both the checking and savings, totalling 2000, with 2% cash back on my citi card