Western Financial Bank (now Wachovia)'s Online Money MArket Plus ($1 min, 4.5% APY) may be a good candidate to track.

Wachovia has recently also bought World Savings Bank, which is well-known for extremely competitive short-term CD rates (currently 5.51% APY 7 month CD $10K min).

This combination makes Wachovia all the more interesting to have a banking relationship with, I think....

Wachovia seems interested in keeping Western Financial Bank's Online MM Plus account competitive.

Its intentions with regard to World Savings' CD offerings is not yet clear; but given World's awesome mortgage loan assets and highly profitable history, it seems conceivable that Wachovia will keep the World Savings business model unchanged. It is also conceivable that Wachovia will rather offer good rates on the liquid WFB Online MM Plus accounts than significantly higher CD rates (as World is doing, with its sky-high 5.51% APY right now...).

These are all speculation at this point, but it makes me think that Western Financial Bank's Online MM Plus is a good candidate to track.

What do others think ?

Anakin

anakinskywalker said:Western Financial Bank (now Wachovia)'s Online Money MArket Plus ($1 min, 4.5% APY) may be a good candidate to track.

Wachovia has recently also bought World Savings Bank, which is well-known for extremely competitive short-term CD rates (currently 5.51% APY 7 month CD $10K min).

This combination makes Wachovia all the more interesting to have a banking relationship with, I think....

Wachovia seems interested in keeping Western Financial Bank's Online MM Plus account competitive.
Anakin
Actually soon after buying WFB Wachovia increased the rate on that account to 4.60% APY. That shows they wanted to stay in the game. Wachovia has never been know for high rates but looks like they will be a player now. The parent company of WFB, Golden West Financial Corp is a large very profitable mortgage house and should mean the WS type deals will keep popping up as they need cash

delirium4u said:Waro said:Might want to add Citibank E-Savings at 4.50% w/ no minimum
In addition to what SweetCash said, it doesn't really have no minimum. The account itself has no minimum, but to open it you must also open a Citibank checking account, and that one does have a minimum.

If we're going to nitpick here, the cheapest Citibank Checking account is EZ-Checking which has no minimum with direct deposit or 2 bill pays a month (even $1 twice a month to yourself counts!). Even if you do not have direct deposit and do not use bill pay the minimum for the account is still only $1,500 combined (checking and savings) which is significantly less than the $5000 in savings only required by Presidential.

Also, the rate on the account has just been raised to 4.75%, a sign that Citibank is serious about keeping this product and keeping it competitve. The recent increase also means that for balances of under $5000 this account is the best available. OP has ultimate control over what gets tracked in the thread and I respect that but there are now more reasons than ever to add the account.

addy2000 said:
If we're going to nitpick here...

The recent increase also means that for balances of under $5000 this account is the best available.

If you're going to nitpick GMAC offers 4.75% for accounts under $5000 as well. It requires a $500 balance but at the same time it doesn't require a second checking account, $1500, direct deposit, or bill payment.

Read on the HSBC thread that they are raising the rate to 4.65%apy from tomorrow 5/18.

lvlike86 said:SweetCash said:addy2000 said:there are now more reasons than ever to add the account.
Why don't you go ahead, collect the data for Citibank's product and add it to the Quick Summary?

I'm sensing a strong anti-citi feeling from the OP.

It's because "live richly" is out of style. The new trend is to live poorly!

updated rates of Capital One HYMM, UFB Direct HYMM, ING Direct, HSBC Direct, Emigrant Direct and the Fed rate.
Looks like HSBC is determined to stay on top.

Someone in the ED thread was interested in this so I used the rates I found here to do a little comparison of daily rate averages. (I.e. just a weighted average of daily rates for a specified period of time)

I've left out Virtualbank and Western Financial because their rates have apparently not changed in a while. Also left out Capital One because no history here. Left out ING because they are obviously not a rate leader at this time.

Daily average rates from 3/1/05 to 8/25/06:

UFB Direct: 3.85%
GMAC: 3.90%
HSBC: 3.97%
ED: 3.98%

(Note: assumes UFB & HSBC rates on 3/1/05 were 3.20% and 2.75%, respectively.)

Daily average rates from 6/1/05 to 8/25/06:

UFB Direct: 3.97%
GMAC 4.13%
ED 4.14%
HSBC 4.20%
Presidential: 4.30%

Daily average rates from 1/1/06 to 8/25/06:

UFB Direct 4.31%
ED: 4.56%
Presidential: 4.67%
GMAC: 4.68%
HSBC: 4.75%

Daily average rates from 5/25/06 to 8/25/06:

UFB Direct 4.54%
ED: 4.91%
GMAC: 4.91%
HSBC: 4.91%
Presidential: 5.02%

Yup, mst3k, it's strange how marketing strategies between banks differ, yet if you look at their long-term averages they are much closer than you'd expect from just following their daily rate differences. (it's probably how they all stay in business and have similar margins and earnings)

In the country where I'm from, bank deposit rates are essentially pegged to their equivalent of the fed funds rate. In fact, banks there were recently successfully sued for not passing on fed funds rate changes to customers quickly enough, and they now have to pay a lump sum difference for small rate differences over the last decade or so.

GMAC's rate goes down yet again.