I’m mostly an autopilot kind of investor and saver. I don’t enjoy researching investments and I only like reviewing our holdings when everything’s going in the right direction (and there hasn’t been a lot of that lately). But a facebook page caused me to review our bank account situation lately.
A friend of a friend had a fan link to ING Direct. I’ve been a client of ING for a few years so I looked over the page and I thought it was pretty good. But I was surprised by a comment from a fan that the High Interest Savings rate had been recently lowered to 1.85%. Holy cow! That doesn’t feel very high interest to me. So I shopped around a bit. There’s some excellent comparison sites out there. I always assume ING is near the top so I don’t often check them. But according to the comparison - Canadian Tire Bank has a rate of 2.5% plus a +1% 3 month promotional bonus.
I pulled out the spreadsheet program. Say we were talking a full CDIC-insured balance of $100K… That’s a difference of $900 in year 1! Easy to check comments and reviews. Looks fine. And I didn’t find any negative service comments (I’ve had really bad service issues with another HISA bank - ICICI - so I always check).
So it took 2 minutes to signup with CT, and the account will be set up as soon as they process my cheque. Then I’ll simply move some funds from ING, into my transactional bank account and on to CT. (I would never link the accounts from two savings accounts - I think it’s important to keep a low-balance transaction account between them as a firewall - more about that in a future post).
The lesson for me is to occasionally comparison check HISA accounts - maybe once a quarter. Where there’s really no switch cost and no service differentiation - then price rules. The lesson for ING? Well I suppose I could say that the Facebook page led to me leave them - but I actually think that Facebook is a good play for ING… they aren’t able to differentiate on price and they have a good brand that a social media campaign can leverage.
#1 by Roger - April 5th, 2009 at 11:12
I tend to feel there is a lack of awareness as to how people can maximize the value they get for ther money. It fascinates me what they teach in schools and yet fail to introduce young people to the basics of financial mgmt until they get past high school. No wonder that most really have tyet to exploit options to their full potential. Most never do.
The reality is after taxes these amounts should be reduced by almost 50%. So one question I would think that needs to come into play, even for the most conservative and liquid of options is how to I keep the most of my hard earned savings and interest. Enter the financial advisor. Yes finding a trustable one is the main step but often this is very doable simply by asking friends and family. As an example, most blue chip banks are offering preferred shares with 6% yields. Coporate bonds for AAA firms are trending in the same rate. Tax wise some of these are much more appealing and even under these difficult economic times these are very conservative options. What is fascinating is that the financial advisor fees are also tax deductible. There is one reason, I believe the rich get richer, they let the best at what they do, do the work for them and in the process actually pay less fees than most of us. Many don’t realize that they can get access to some of the best advisors with $100k. Does this mean the aevarge person is left out. No. I often wonder, how people can invest huge some in their homes but fret greatly when considering their wealth. For those who don’t have that $100k, they can borrow to invest. Here is one more fascinating thing. The interest is deductible. This would get many to receive more sound advice, better rates and retain more of their hard earned assets.