The high interest rate climate in Australia isn’t bad news for everyone, especially for those who have their money saved in high interest online savings accounts.
I noticed yesterday that BankWest is now offering 8.25% p.a. for their TeleNet Saver account. Fair enough it is an introductory rate until 1 January 2009 but still, that’s the highest interest rate I’ve seen and it’s not even a term deposit. ING Direct has been a little behind with their interest rates of late but they are too offering an bonus rate but it’s (only) 7.90% p.a. and only valid until 30 September 2008.
There is a cool website called ratecity that allows you to compare all the accounts available.
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ING has always had very good, consistent rates.
Suncorp has high interest sub accounts on their everyday options accounts. They allow you to access your cash by transferring it to your main account instantly . If I recall correctly, it can take 2-3 days to access funds from accounts such as ING Direct. But then again, that could be a plus, so you’re less tempted to dip into your savings!
I have noticed that ING Direct have been a bit behind other organisations like BankWest of late. For example, the current non promotional rate for ING Direct is only 6.90% compared to BankWest’s 7.25%. I even get 7.0% directly from ANZ linked to my main account with instant access. To be fair, if you put interest rate differences into perspective you would need a fair sum of money to notice the difference of 0.35% p.a. and to even make it worthwhile changing banks.
The catch with the Suncorp high interest sub-accounts you mentioned is that they are essentially term deposits meaning if you need to access any of your fixed funds then you lose up to 80% of your interest earned. So unless you’re absolutely sure you don’t need the cash in the time that you set I wouldn’t recommend it. If you lock into longer terms you also risk losing interest rate increases as places like BankWest have been updating their interest rates on the day of RBA announcements.
I gave up on interest a long time ago, and now just take a cut lunch to work whenever i can. That way, i save more money in a week than i would make on interest in a year.
Plus, factor in that i’m poor, so the amount of money i have at my disposal to use for interest-gleaning is negligible.
I do understand that small amounts of money don’t earn large amounts of interest, but I still am surprised when I hear people say that they have a few thousand $ in their normal ‘transaction’ account earning 0%, which is essentially loaning it to the bank for free, when you can have the bank paying you for it.
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