Virtual Bank Virtual Savings + eMoney Market Accounts

Virtual Bank has quite a few options for online accounts. Their Virtual Savings account only pays 1.35%APY and requires a minimum $1000 to open. It's recommended on their web page as being a "good starter account for cihldren." In fact, for children, there's no minimum balance or monthly service charge, and it's FDIC insured as per all savings accounts. There's not much other info, unless you scour through the disclosures (PDF format).

Two other accounts of interest are the Premium Money Market, which ranges from 3.25% APY to 3.50% APY (min'm $5000 to open), and the eMoney Market. The latter ranges from 4.60% to 5.13% APY, depending on your balance. The minimum to open is only $100. Balances under $10,000 pay 4.60% APY. While there are several balance brackets, at the time of writing, they all paid 4.60% below $50,000. From $50K to under 100K, it's 4.86%APY. The bracket where your balance is $100K and above pays 5.13%APY. However, there's a note underneath saying "Balance limited to $100,000 per client." I assume that this refers to the maximum FDIC insured amount.

Is A Mutual Fund A Safe Investment? Try Dollar Cost Averaging

Let's not beat around the bush. Mutual funds, with the exception of a money market fund, are similar to stocks. Putting too much money into them can actually be riskier than buying stock, especially if you're not paying attention, because of fund fees, etc. A specific fund also also typically represents an entire sector, so if the sector takes a downturn, your fund goes down.

On the other hand, if you're into mutual funds for longer-term investments, they can be fairly safe, except for the most volatile sectors, and especially if you apply Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) to get the most out of your mutual fund investments.

How To Save For Your Own House - A Few Tips

Buying a house should be considered a project, if not a "family business" investment. It's undoubtedly one of the most important investments you will ever make in your life, and if you don't plan every aspect of your life that surrounds this purchase, it could turn out to be the worst investment of your life. Or it could be your best investment, becoming your sanctum sanctorum.

Your decision will affect every member of the family, whether you realize it now or not. Plan loosely long before buying, or the financial stress afterwards can cause family rifts. I've seen it happen. Take some time beforehand to do some relatively easy planning, and every member of your family could eventually learn something valuable about personal finance. (Once they're old enough to appreciate what you teach them.)

Capital One Direct Banking

Capital One has a series of savings accounts that they call "money market" accounts - not to be confused with money market mutual funds. They have two accounts, High Yield Money Market and Money Market, both currently at 5.00% APY (4.88% per annum). These are both categorized as "direct banking". Essentially, these are the same as "online savings accounts", although they also group their Certificates of Deposit (CDs) in there as well, which I'm ignoring in this review.

Amex OneCard Online Savings Account

American Express has come up with a unique way to save with a credit card. It's called the Amex One Card, and it has a "high-yield savings account" attached to it. (At 4.25% APY, at the time of writing.) Whether it's worthwhile for you and/or your family depends on your spending habits and current credit card rates.

The way it works is that once you apply for and receive the Amex One Card credit card, American Express sets up an online savings account for you at American Express Bank. You use the card in normal transactions to pay for purchases. For qualifying purchases, they place 1% of your expenditures into the savings account. (Qualifying purchases exclude Travelers and Gift Cheques, finance charges, fees, returned goods or services, etc.) So you are basically saving 1% off their interest rate, which gets compounded.

Countrywide Bank Savingslink Online Savings Account

Countrywide Bank's Savingslink account offers one of the highest rates for online savings accounts (5.25% APY at the time of this writing, and subject to change). However, to get that rate, you need a $50,000 balance. They do have a tiered structure for rates, dependent on your balance. Though to get any interest at all, you must have at least $1,000. Oddly enough, if you go over $2,499,999, they drop their rate to less than 2%. This is probably in hopes of encouraging longer-term investments in their CDs (Certificates of Deposit) or other options.

Deposits are FDIC insured, as per usual, up to $100,000 for an individual account. Access is 24-7, and money can be transferred to the account one-time or on a repeating schedule. You are only allowed six withdrawals in a month. Interest is actually compounded daily, unlike a lot of other online savings accounts.

Citibank Direct e-Savings Account

Citibank is currently offering 5% APY, as of July 7, 2006, on their Citibank Direct e-Savings Account. On the spectrum of interest offered for online savings accounts, this is near the very top, and rose from 4.75% from just four days ago.

The account requires no minimum balance, allows free online bill payment, online fraud protection, free wireless alerts, and 24 hour access to money. (Of course, fraud protection and 24 hour acccess should be something every online savings account offers.) The e-Savings account also offers free Citibank EZ Checking and the ability to view statements online.

Heritage Bank Online Savings Account

Heritage Bank North America has an online savings account whose interest rate is 4.88% APY as of July 3, 2006. This is one of the highest rates available, but they require a minimum deposit of $1,000. They also charge a monthly fee of $10 if your balance drops below $1,000 on any given day during a month.

Like many online savings accounts, you can only open an account through their website. You can link the Heritage Bank online savings account to your regular bank account, regardless of which bank the account is at (either a chequing or savings account). The account cannot be a money market account, and you can only link one account.