Emigrant Direct 5.0% APY, Presidential Savings 5.12% APY, More
Emigrant Direct is now at 5.0% APY. [Emigrant Review] [$10-$20 Opening Bonus]
Presidential also raised rates last week to 5.12% APY on their Premier Savings Account. [Savings Review]
Added: VirtualBank is keeping their base rate of 4.60% APY, but if you keep $100,000 in there you’ll get 5.13% APY.
By Jonathan Ping | Banking | 7/4/06, 4:33pm
July 4th, 2006 at 4:37 pm
Does Emigrant do a hard credit pull? If not I might do the 10-20 bonus thing.
July 4th, 2006 at 4:38 pm
Wow, that was probably the fastest comment after posting I’ve ever had!
No, Emigrant did not do a hard pull for me, and I’ve never heard of them doing one for anyone else.
July 4th, 2006 at 5:55 pm
I sincerely apologize for asking this dumb question, but I can’t wrap my head around the answer. So, Emigrant is 5.00% APY. I’m with GMAC right now, 4.80% APY. Your “rate chaser” uses APR, not APY.
If one only knows the APY, can you still use the rate chaser? I understand APY is the more useful number, but then why does “rate chaser” not ask for APY?
July 4th, 2006 at 6:15 pm
Not a dumb question at all. The reason why I ask for APR instead of APY is that the underlying formula uses APR, and I was trying to avoid having to ask for compounding frequencies.
After I made that calculator, I also made the
APY to APR Calculator
…which I haven’t used yet to update the Rate-Chaser calculator code. I’ll go and at least add a link, so that people can just use them together.
Finally, if you just plug in APYs for both, your final answer will be very close anyways. It may be off by a few percent is all.
July 5th, 2006 at 8:06 am
HSBC is at 5.05% APY
July 5th, 2006 at 11:03 am
Excellent…the pressure was on after HSBC’s move. Thanks.
July 5th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
HSBC and Presidential do hard credit pulls, correct?
July 5th, 2006 at 1:33 pm
HSBC, no. Presidential, yes on your first account with them.
July 5th, 2006 at 2:47 pm
Netbank:
6 mo cd rate: 4.93% APY: 5.05%
1-yr cd rate: 5.31% APY: 5.45%
source: http://netbank.com/investments_cds.htm
July 6th, 2006 at 6:55 am
Jonathan, as a fellow Californian and Vanguard fan, have you ever considered Vanguard’s CA tax-exempt money market fund instead of a taxable savings account at an online bank? The yield on this fund is 3.66% and when I factor in the tax savings (I’m in the 25% fed bracket and the 9.3% state bracket), this fund seems more attractive than even HSBC’s current 5.05% rate, and just as liquid. Just curious to know what you and other readers think. Here’s a link to the fund:
link
July 6th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Rick – Yes, if it offers the better rate than the others, I say why not? Fidelity has a similar product. I believe there are minimums to consider, though. I actually don’t live in CA right now, so I haven’t really looked too deeply into it myself.
July 6th, 2006 at 1:22 pm
when you guys are looking into these tax-exempt funds offered by Vanguard and Fidelity, are you factoring in the management fees when looking at total after tax return?
If the management fee is .3%, when vanguard quotes a 3.66% yield, is that after management fee’s??? or would the yield really be 3.33%?
thanks in advance
July 6th, 2006 at 1:43 pm
Listed money market yields are net after expenses. Thus in your example it would be 3.66%.
It should usually say that somewhere in the fine print as well.
July 10th, 2006 at 2:25 pm
Their bankrate rating has dropped to 2 stars! – no thanks. I will stick with banks that have a good rating.
July 12th, 2006 at 12:29 pm
I didn’t realize that Bankrate.com gave rankings to specific mutual funds. John, you mentioned that the rating has dropped to two stars — were you referring to Vanguard’s California Tax-Exempt fund? (VCTXX)
By the way, I decided to move my money from ING to Emigrant since ING no longer remains competitive with its rates, rather than put it into VCTXX. I would have come out marginally better with this fund (at it’s current yield) but between the expenses and redemption fees, I’d rather my $$ just sit in Emigrant and grow without hassle.
July 14th, 2006 at 5:55 am
fyi
Emigrant will be 5.15% APY effective July 28th.
July 18th, 2006 at 3:04 pm
Emigrant Direct is raising the rate to 5.15% effective July 28th!
Woohoo!