Recommend your online savings bank

[Anonymous]

I'm looking for a safe place to park some funds that I might need to access in the short term. Priorities are good interest rate, user friendly website, stability/ soundness. Prefer not too onerous waiting periods for external transfers. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

I opened an account with ING Direct back in 2007 and have been a relatively satisfied customer. They became Capital One 360 not too long ago, which is annoying, but there have been very few changes other than the color of my debit card. I have both a savings account and a checking account.

Things that I like about it:
-Easy to set up (and cancel/change) automatic transfers from other bank accounts.
-Easy to navigate the website. Nothing annoys me quite like having to click 10,000 times to get to the page I want. The CO360 page is pretty straightforward.
-The checking account/debit card functions like a credit card. If you use the debit card and go below your balance, instead of a NSF fee, it goes on credit at a relatively low rate (I want to say it's 6-7%). We use it as an emergency card, and then I can just hop online and transfer the money over from savings.
-Easy to have paper checks printed and sent to others. This came in handy this summer when we rented a beach house and the owner tried to claim we never sent our deposit. I was able to send her a screen shot of the check sent confirmation, and then she admitted that she had lost it and needed us to send another.
-Ability to deposit checks via mobile photo app. Speaks for itself, so easy!

Bummer:
-Interest rate sucks. But that's going to be anywhere.

[Anonymous]

I too, am a happy ING/Cap 360 customer. Interest rate is better than I got from Bank of America.

[Anonymous]

I have accounts at both ING/Capital One 360 and Ally. The rate at Ally is slightly better. Both are pretty easy to use.

[Anonymous]

ING or Emigrantdirect.

[Anonymous]

ING/CapOne 360 is fine if you need a combination of good interest rate and checking facilities. Their constant 2 business day hold periods can get annoying, though. If you just want a good interest rate, Barclays is very good at .9% and super easy to set up.

If you're not antsy about short term bonds, consider an online bank account with Fidelity. It's a little more complicated to achieve a decent savings rate, but their bill pay facilities can't be beat and transferring money around is painless. The have a great cash back CC, too.

[Anonymous]

Oh, and if you need to deposit large checks directly into your account, CapOne's limit is $3k. The limit at Fidelity is $10k.

[Anonymous]

Bankrate will show you the current interest rates of online only banks. I have cash parked at Ever Bank which had a promotional rate, taking its 1yr. rate higher than the others. I mainly transfer funds in, so didn't need too many bells and whistles.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Oh, and if you need to deposit large checks directly into your account, CapOne's limit is $3k. The limit at Fidelity is $10k.

I use Cap One 360 and that's my only complaint. A $3500 bonus check was annoying to deposit as it had to go to a local bank -> transfer instead of just be deposited via photo.

[Anonymous]

I have been very satisfied with Ally, for a lot of the same reasons other posters have mentioned above. Easy to use, deposit checks from your phone, link checking to savings to avoid overdrafts, etc.

I imagine some other banks do this too, but Ally also reimburses you any ATM fees charged you, so any ATM you see is always effectively free. You can also request as many checkbooks and debit cards as you want, also free.