Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Anyone use ING Direct?
- Thread starter todd2000
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
todd2000 said:
ING is a Dutch company that does business internationally. Not everyone in the world is from the United States of America, and therefore, not everyone will get the same interest rates.
They have had several specials over the past few months where you could temporarily lock in better rates. (Jan 1 - APril 15th) was their winter sale. Don't feel too bad, I think most people are getting the 4.15%. I might do a six month CD at the end of the summer if I think I won't need the money ... we shall see.
I do the same thing as Silent Panda. I keep a "safe" amount in my local banking account and then transfer the rest to the ING Savings account. The hubby and I have a few different savings accounts with ING allocated for various things (i.e., emergency funds, house savings fund, regular savings, etc.). We haven't had any problems with it except the slow transfer to and from the accounts, but that's a minor inconvenience for the intest rate we get. We've had our accounts for over a year now and the rates have already gone up at least a full percent. They're the best we've found anywhere.
If you decide to sign up I can give you a referral where they will give you an extra $25 if you deposit at least $250 into your savings (I'll get $10 for the referral
). PM me if you're interested.
If you decide to sign up I can give you a referral where they will give you an extra $25 if you deposit at least $250 into your savings (I'll get $10 for the referral
). PM me if you're interested.
Am I stupid?
For some reason, I have the impression that you live in Canada. I do too Yet, when I go to ING's Canada site, the highest interest rate I see is 3.85%.
http://ingdirect.ca/en/acct_rate/index.html
Am I looking at the wrong site or something?
Abstract said:
For some reason, I have the impression that you live in Canada. I do too
Yet, when I go to ING's Canada site, the highest interest rate I see is 3.85%.http://ingdirect.ca/en/acct_rate/index.html
Am I looking at the wrong site or something?
Brian Hickman said:
off topic i realize, but do you pay for this service? also, does it only pay the bills that are the same each month, or how does it work with ones that vary?
jelloshotsrule said:
It probably depends on your bank and/or account, but I think most banks these days offer online bill pay for free. I pay all my bills online through my bank, and love it. I can set up payments either so that they are the same each month or that the payment can be changed as needed. I have to make sure I change it at least five or six business days before the bill is due in order to allow for processing time. I usually go in and change the amount as soon as the bill comes in the mail (or e-mail).
Alternatively, I think a lot of companies that bill you (i.e., utilities, cell phone, cable companies, etc) will allow you to set up automatic payment each month through them. They will debit the amount of your monthly bill automatically from your account for you if you don't want to have to log in each month to your bank's site to change your monthly bill amount. I don't like to do that because I like to minimize the amount of places that have authorization to withdraw from my account.
Well I opened an account with ING Direct seems good so far, but I was reading, the account terms, and it says
"ACCOUNT TRASFER LIMITATIONS. You may only transfer funds out of your savings account up to six times per monthly statement cycle using any combination of our electronic fund transfer services; no more than three of these transfers may be made by debit card."
So, do they offer debit cards and im missing something?
"ACCOUNT TRASFER LIMITATIONS. You may only transfer funds out of your savings account up to six times per monthly statement cycle using any combination of our electronic fund transfer services; no more than three of these transfers may be made by debit card."
So, do they offer debit cards and im missing something?
elfin buddy said:For some reason, I have the impression that you live in Canada. I do too
http://ingdirect.ca/en/acct_rate/index.html
Am I looking at the wrong site or something?
Is it because of my tone, or is it because I talked about PC Financial earlier in this thread?
Don't worry, I'd give the same sort of answer if someone assumed everyone was white, or rich, or whatever. And my ING account is in Australia since I live there, but yes, I guess I'm Canadian. I believe these interest rates are tied very closely to the prime lending rate, and ING or PC Financial offer interest rates of around 1 to 1.5% less than the prime lending rate, and so I'm guessing Australia has a higher prime lending rate than Canada. So if the prime lending rate was 5%, they'd give you 3.5% interest for your savings account, but lend the money you deposited into your account to someone else at 5 to 7%. That way they make money using YOUR money.
It might seem like a moot point now since you've already opened the account, but the question I would have asked myself is whether or not the extra interest is worth the tradeoffs of 1) not having ready access to your own money and 2) not having somewhere physically you can easily go to resolve problems, inquiries, etc.
It also helps to take into consideration how much you are putting into this account. I'm not trying to get into your business or anything, but let's consider the following choices on a deposit of $1000 and leaving it for a year:
Local bank: 1% a year, .25% a month, compounded monthly
ING: 4%, .33% a month, compounded monthly
At the end of the year, with your local bank, you'd have an account worth $1,010.0460, and with ING youd have $1,040.7415. That's a rough difference of $30.70, or about $2.56 a month.
That's a somewhat simplistic example, so let's assume you're going to fund the account throughout the year at an extra $100 a month. Working with the same interest rates, here's what we get:
Local bank: $2,216.5659
ING: $2,267.0620
This works out to a difference of $50.50, or $4.21 a month, on $2,200 of your money.
Your choice.
It also helps to take into consideration how much you are putting into this account. I'm not trying to get into your business or anything, but let's consider the following choices on a deposit of $1000 and leaving it for a year:
Local bank: 1% a year, .25% a month, compounded monthly
ING: 4%, .33% a month, compounded monthly
At the end of the year, with your local bank, you'd have an account worth $1,010.0460, and with ING youd have $1,040.7415. That's a rough difference of $30.70, or about $2.56 a month.
That's a somewhat simplistic example, so let's assume you're going to fund the account throughout the year at an extra $100 a month. Working with the same interest rates, here's what we get:
Local bank: $2,216.5659
ING: $2,267.0620
This works out to a difference of $50.50, or $4.21 a month, on $2,200 of your money.
Your choice.
CorvusCamenarum said:
That doesn't sound correct .... I don't have a calc with me but rest assured 1%/yr is not 0.25%/month
CorvusCamenarum said:
Well first it's a SAVINGS account, so I don't really plan on taking any money out of it so why not get the highest interest rate possible? Mabye your rich and don't care about saving money, but right now I really need to start saving money, and anything that can help is welcomed. 4.15% is much better then the .5% that my bank is offering, and I checked with another local bank and their only offering .35% I'll take the 4.15 thank you very much. And I hopefully plan to have more then $2200 in there. And if my math is correct 1% would be .083% a month, vs .33% with ING.
Let's not forget that interest on savings helps defend against inflation, which cuts the value of your savings over time anyway. So the higher the interest rate the better.
CorvusCamenarum said:
That sounds very wrong.
PS: I get between $30 to $50 USD per month on interest alone. Sure, my interest rate is 5.4%, but it's still worth it no matter what. There really isn't much of a downside of using ING. I mean, other banks charge for services. Why? Its incredible that a bank is paying me money to deposit to their bank while others charge a monthly rate.
I only get 0.25% with my savings account, and 0.10% for my chequing account. Obviously ING is better. Last month I got $45, and that's significant to me.
todd2000 said:
No debit cards are offered that I know of. You have to do electronic transfers to your other bank accounts through their website. The six transactions per month is a federal regulation on savings accounts. I had the same stipulation on my other savings account with a completely different bank. If you transfer money out of the account more than six times per month for more than two months in a row then the ING account will have to be closed since they don't offer any other type of non-savings account. My other bank would just convert it to a checking account, but that's obviously not an option with ING. That transfer stipulation shouldn't be a problem so long as you truly treat the account as a savings account.
Abstract said:
Having come from the UK, I was absolutely gobsmacked when I first opened a bank account in Canada a couple of years ago and they started talking about service charges.
I made the poor bank clerk go red when I said the bank was either very bad at making money from my money or just taking the p*ss out of it's customers - either way it's not good for business.
Hoef said:
You're right, my mistake. I started with different numbers in the beginning but decided to expand the gap to better illustrate my point (and forgot to proofread apparently). I did run the figures through my financial calculator twice though, so the ending amounts should be on the mark.
I think you missed the point of what I was attempting to illustrate. But now that you've given me some revised figures, this is what we get (initial funding of $1000 and 12 monthly increments of $100)todd2000 said:
ING: $2,269.62
Local bank: $2,208.27
Difference: $61.35, or $5.11 a month
The question I originally put forth was if it was worth it to you to accept the hassle of dealing with a non-local bank for a better interest rate. I've also shown that the additional interest you would receive isn't that much. If you're worried about getting the best possible interest rate on savings, a 30 year savings bond has a rate of 5.13% as of yesterday.
CorvusCamenarum said:
Are you including the bank's service charges which reduce the value of your savings as well?
Danksi said:
Apparently not
as the OP didn't provide those details. At my bank, however, it costs nothing to have a plain vanilla savings account. I'm sure his bank might have some different policies, but that's all I had to go on at the time.IMO, savings accounts aren't the way to go anyhow. By the time you're depositing enough money to get any real interest, you're already making so much that it's inconsequential.
ING is the way to go. I looked at my PayPal account, which also gains interest, however it is not covered under FDIC terms. I know PayPal is a different type of banking scenerio which makes the ING account a no brainer if you are truely set on saving some money.
CorvusCamenarum said:
You don't see a meaningful difference when you have small amounts of cash in the account. Try running this scenario:
Initial deposit: $25,000
ING Rate: 4.15%
Traditional Bank Rate: 0.5%
Monthly deposit of $250
Span: 5 years
Results:
ING: $47,449.35 ($40k investment + $7,449.35 interest earned)
Traditional Bank: $40,824.94 ($40k investment + $824.94 interest earned)
Hickman
Brian Hickman said:
If you've got that much just to bury in a mayonaise jar so to speak, chances are you can negotiate something better with your local bank. Back when I was putting multi-thousand dollar checks in the bank on a regular basis, they started offering me all kinds of extras.
here's the previous thread about ING. i wonder if other banks are starting to get online and match their rates... my friend mentioned hsbc as one, and another which i forget. so i guess ING is no longer alone in the high interest savings game
To Follow on CorvusCamenarum's experience
My parents are kind of old school and require a savings account, even though they don't need that much liquidity. I told them the brick and mortar rate was BS, and I ran the math on their savings and I showed them all the money they were leaving on the table. My dad brought these calculations to the brick and mortar and they just about matched the ING Rate, because he threatened to take all his money out. So now he's happy since he's not using an online bank account but he's getting competitive rates.
So the moral the story is negotiate with your bank. They need you to make money and they'll probably flex more than you know if you use the right kind of threat / leverage.
My parents are kind of old school and require a savings account, even though they don't need that much liquidity. I told them the brick and mortar rate was BS, and I ran the math on their savings and I showed them all the money they were leaving on the table. My dad brought these calculations to the brick and mortar and they just about matched the ING Rate, because he threatened to take all his money out. So now he's happy since he's not using an online bank account but he's getting competitive rates.
So the moral the story is negotiate with your bank. They need you to make money and they'll probably flex more than you know if you use the right kind of threat / leverage.
There are actually several banks that are near or even over their rate. AmTrust Direct is one.. their e-Money Market account is almost identical in features and usage to ING's Orange Savings, but it's got 5.3% APY instead of 4.5%. I have accounts with both banks, and they've been great, although ING's web interface is faster, simpler, and more powerful. You can't beat that 5.3% though.