For anyone who hasn’t already opened an online savings account, you should.  On the most part I’ve never been a big fan of saving accounts.  Historically speaking you were almost always better off putting money into a money market account.  However the rates on savings accounts offered by the likes ING, HSBC, and Emigrant are almost impossible to beat.  HSBC at 4.25% trumps many 1 Year CDs!

These accounts have no minimum balance, so there really isn’t any reason not to open one.  Just last year I earned over $100 in interest from the money I parked in my ING account.  Money on the most part that would’ve sat in my checking account or money I would’ve parked in 2% money market fund.  As I see it, I basically got at least extra $50 for just opening account.   They can offer these rates basically because they offer no service, and reserve the right to boot you as customer.   This is perfectly fine with me.  I prefer to do all my banking online as is. 

One item of note; the process for setting up an account with the banks can be a bit of pain, especially HSBC.   HSCB sends your customer # and PIN in separate physical mailings which can take over a week to recieve.  Of course the first mailing with your customer # implies that you can use the pin that you created during the application process.   Had I not done a little research beforehand, I might have thought I actually did create a PIN.   I didn’t.  Two days later I was mailed by PIN and finished setting up my account.