Finances & Money

Opened a Bank of America Money Market Savings Account

I’ve been doing my banking with Bank of America for the last 5 years, and I’m very pleased with their online billpay features. I do find their interface a bit cluttered, and they bury information such as APR/APY, where other sites have it up front (ING Direct), but their ATMs and branches are convenient to my home and work locations, so I stuck with them.

A year ago, I went on a quest to find a better savings account because BoA’s savings rates were horrendous. They were only providing about 0.2% return on the savings, and although at the time I had very little saved, it was still nowhere near the competition. So, I jumped ship Emigrant Direct, HSBC Direct and ING Direct in search of a better rate, but I was uncomfortable having to manage my money in so many locations. I kept hoping that BoA would come in and rescue me from financial clutter!

And then along came Jonathan from My Money Blog to tell me that Bank of America was now offering a high yield money market account! I signed up for a Penn State Alumni MMA through MyExpression Banking last week. The account was opened and linked to my online account within a day or two, and as of this morning was funded with $3,000 from our HSBC Direct account.

Here’s the unfortunate part: Between opening the account and funding it, the rate dropped from a 5.3% APY to a 4.65% APY (for balances between $2,500 and $10,000). In comparison, that’s still better than ING Direct’s new 4.3%, but now below HSBC’s and Emigrant’s 5.05% rate. Why couldn’t BoA show some love and compete a little better with the market leaders??? If you want all our savings, you need to pony up some more interest baby!

So for now, I’ll keep the majority of our money with HSBC, but keep the money I have with BoA in there to avoid the $12 month charge for balances under $2,500. I’ll link our checking to this savings for overdraft protection and dump our old regular savings account with BoA. I’ll also keep ING Direct because it has some sweet referral bonuses for both YOU and ME, so let me know if you want a referral for a free $25! I’ve already had 6 readers take advantage of this bonus!