ING Direct

Wells Fargo and Bank of America both provide savings accounts. Both have a monthly fee of $3 unless you maintain a balance of $300. Bank of America’s interest rate is 0.2%. Wells Fargo’s interest rate is 0.1%. That’s not even a whole percent.

These larger banks have an outrageous overhead. They have many physical locations all over the country – ALL of which require money for the building, utilities, and salaries for the numerous bankers and tellers in each facility. These larger banks also spend thousands on printed materials and paying postage to mail it. Of course, they pay for all this stuff with the interest they make off of their customers’ money. Wouldn’t it be great if there was an online bank that did away with all the overhead cost – and passed the extra savings off to the customer?

Meet ING Direct.

ING Direct is an online bank. They have TWO physical stores. Since most people do their own banking right online themselves – they can drastically cut back on salary cost. And since most customers choose to receive internet notification instead of posted and printed materials – ING Direct is able to save thousands on overhead cost. Remember Wells Fargo’s savings rate? It was 0.1%. ING Direct’s savings rate is 4.5%. It was 2.5% when I opened my first savings account with them two years ago.

Here’s how it works. I have a checking account at a large bank. I give my routing and account information through ING Direct’s secure connection. This connection between your checking account and ING Savings Account is about the only way you can transfer money to and from. To deposit money into your savings account, you tell ING to take money from your checking account. To withdraw money, you tell ING to deposit money into your checking account. It’s that easy. The interest rate is 4.5% (that’s better than mutual funds!), there are NO minimum balances at all – ever, and I’ve used them for two years with great success. The website is very intuitive with very good instructions – but they still have phone bankers available to help. I highly recommend them. This is a “plug” for the ING Direct savings account.

Here’s the deal. If you open up your ING Direct savings account and make an initial deposit of $250 or greater, ING Direct will give you $25 free. And they will give ME $10 free for referring you. If you’re interested, please email me your email address and your first and last name at adam@newhope.in. That’s all I need to send a referral. You have to sign up for ING Direct through the link in my referral email to receive the free $25, and for me to receive the free $10.

I know it sounds to good to be true – but so far for me they have been great. I joined on the $25 referral thing — and I’ve never looked back. If you’re looking to save your money – I am giving a “plug” for ING Direct.