Essentially:
“Hi I’d like to discuss some options for my account.”
“Most certainly.”
“I’ve just recently paid off my loans and now that my account is going steadily, I was hoping to earn some money off of it.”
“You might be interested in our savings accounts. Are you familiar with them?”
“Yeah. I noticed the interest rates were kinda low.”
“They may seem low, but they are very competitive rates. We can also provide higher tiered interest returns starting at $15,000.”
“Yeah, I saw those too, but with the current rates, I’d still be losing money to inflation. Is there anything you can do to give me a higher rate?”
“Unfortunately, these are bank regulated rates and we can’t change them.”
“So you can’t raise them for me?”
“These are state wide rates and I’m afraid we can’t alter them for individuals.”
“I see. I’d like to do a wire transfer please.”
Mwahaha. Did they raise your interest? (Also, come to ING Direct! If you can deposit at least $250, we can both get $25. I think. Or maybe you get $25 and I get $15. I don’t recall anymore.)
No. I did actually wire transfer.
How long do I have to keep money in the ING account? I’d be more than willing to send some free money your way if I don’t need to keep my funds tied up something like a year.
Looks like you have to keep the $250 in the account for 30 days. http://www.mymoneyblog.com/ing-direct-promotion-25-opening-referral-bonus-for-new-accounts
You get $25 immediately, I get $10. So it’s not really _that_ awesome for me, but hey, it’s a good meal for you, definitely. And ING is nice. They also used to have the highest interest rate in the old days*, but now I think HSBC is a pretty strong competitor. (An HSBC account is pretty useful, if you don’t have one. They’re pretty international, and I’ve found them in Taiwan, Paris, Maryland, and California. XD). But ING’s web interface is so much better.
The only downside: Although they have a free checkings account, they don’t fully support paper checks. They’ll let you request that checks get sent to a physical address, but that makes things like damage deposits a hassle.
*currently 1.20%, no minimum required to get that rate. They also have decent, no-minimum CDs. And they acquired Sharebuilder, if you want to play with a few stocks (Apple!), transferring money from one to the other is really easy.
Also, email me~ I don’t get email responses from comments (your commenting system doesn’t support it, I guess), so I’ll only see your comments when I come back and read stuff.
Have you considered tax free I-bonds? It’s one of the best ways to keep your money up with the current inflation rates; however, it does tie up your money for a while.