You’ve mentioned several accounts that pay 1% APY or more. Can you suggest some? I have some serious cash that needs to park for a year or so (high 6 figures). Would welcome any suggestions how I could use it to maximize points, cash or miles.
– SM
In this post I am going to make several assumptions and I’ll explain why:
- You’re unwilling or unable to make use of rewards checking accounts or high yield prepaid cards. If you have high six figures that needs to be parked, you’d need to open a lot of these accounts to get the higher rate on your full balance. I just don’t think that is feasible to juggle that many accounts and requirements for most people, that said you might still consider looking at some of them.
- Interest rates are going to stay the same on all of these accounts. It’s extremely difficult to determine if a financial institution is likely to decrease or increase the interest rate they offer in the short term, we can look at rate history and a bunch of other things but I think considering you want to park this money for twelve months you should be OK.
- You’re not interested in putting the money towards bank bonuses. I love bank bonuses, but most of the ones that require large cash deposits actually offer worse rates than high interest accounts.
- You have $1,000,000 to park. This will give us more options and that way I know I’ve covered what you want to park.
- You want near immediate access to your funds. If you knew that you wanted to park your funds for a full twelve months, then you’d need to look at CD’s as well.
Whatever account you choose, you should always make sure it has insurance. There are two main bodies that offer insurance for deposit accounts: FDIC & NCUA. Both of these offer insurance on up to $250,000 in funds, this means that you’ll need four accounts (although if you have a partner then you’d only need two accounts).
You should also keep in mind any fees they might charge, in general savings accounts have low or no fees as they make the majority of the money by putting your deposit to work.
- UFB Direct. 1.25% APY as long as your balance is in excess of $24,999. FDIC insurance.
- Salem Five Direct. 1.05% APY, FDIC & DIF insurance.
- My Savings Direct. 1.05% APY FDIC insurance.
- GE Capital Bank. 1.05% APY FDIC insurance.
You’ll likely be able to find some local banks that offer more than 1.05% APY, I decided not to include any local banks so that everybody could use this list. If you had $1,000,000 to invest you could put $250,000 in each of these accounts, if you had a partner you’d obviously put $500,000 into UFB direct and another $500,000 into the other accounts.
I did find some other interesting products:
- Ultima bank. 2.05% APY, but you need to be under 18 years of age. If you withdraw before your 18 then you receive a penalty of six months interest.
Now my readers are all highly educated and good at finding deals, so let’s see if anybody can beat those rates in the comments. If you have a question about anything, feel free to contact me. I try to answer at least one reader question publicly every week on Saturday and I also answer a lot during the week privately via e-mail.
