For the Best List of CD and Savings Account Rates Bankrate is No Longer the Winner

I have been a big user of Bankrate to find high paying savings accounts and CDs, but no more. A couple of days ago I found Bank Deals. I like the site better than Bankrate for a number of reasons. First, it appears to be more comprehensive than Bankrate -- it even includes local credit unions. Second, there appears to be no axe to grind. On Bankrate some banks pay to be listed while Bank Deals generates his revenue through adsense ads, clearly marked sponsored links, and donations. The next time you are looking for a new savings account or CD I highly recommend you check out Bank Deals.

Wells Fargo PMA, the best financial combo package around?

Wells Fargo has a great combination account called a PMA account. As long as you carry $25,000 in balances in your checking, brokerage, and credit card accounts with Wells Fargo, you qualify for PMA status. You merely need to call them up and "switch" to a PMA, though none of your account numbers will change.

With the PMA account you get:

• No service fees on your checking account, including foreign ATM fees (you still have to pay the other companies' ATM fees unless you follow my advice in this previous post).
• No charge for online bill pay, which I have found to be a HUGE time saver.
• Premium interest rates on your checking account (but still not as good as the online money market accounts mentioned in this previous post).
• 100 free stock or mutual fund trades per year.
• Free enrollement in the rewards program for Wells Fargo credit cards (offers 1% cash back and is a good backup to the cards suggested in this previous post).

As far as I have seen, this is one of the best all-in-one brokerage/checking setups you can find anywhere. If you are "paying" for checking and have a brokerage account with $25,000 in it you should definitely consider switching to the Wells Fargo PMA account today. If you find a better all-in-one account please let me know in the comments.

Checking account has more than one month's expenses in it? You are wasting money!

Checking accounts pay notoriously low interest rates. For instance, my Wells Fargo account pays a measly 0.1% Annual Percentage Yield (APY) for up to $5,000 balances and a 2.75% APY for balances from $5,000-$100,000. Those rates just aren't very good! You should keep as little money as possible in your checking account (I find one month's expenses to be comfortable). As an alternative, I set up an FDIC insured SavingsLink account with Countrywide. This account pays 4.00% APY on balances less than $10k, 5.25% from $10k-$50K, and 5.40% for balances above $50k. The account is linked to my Wells Fargo account and allows me to transfer money back and forth with just a few clicks of the mouse and a two day lag typically. There are numerous other accounts out there, but Countrywide is paying the highest rates right now. In fact, the blog over at getrichslowly.org just detailed the highest paying accounts in this post. Rates tend to vary over time, so if you are reading this long after the original post you should check Bankrate for Money Market Accounts (MAAs) in the Checking and Savings section to compare rates. If you have $25k lying around for emergencies (and I do advocate having a little something stashed away), you will save $625 per year by keeping that money in a higher yielding online savings or money market account as opposed to in your checking account.