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Banks Are Now Accused of Cheating Customers Billions

franknez.com

71–78 of 78 posts

Re: Banks Are Now Accused of Cheating Customers Billions

#72
post #44

Who has the best interest rates for idle cash? I have been using Marcus, but it is not a huge burden to shop around.

Well I am glad I don’t see people writing about “high yield savings accounts” as often I see that copy pasted from old tutorials on basic investing. Maybe I am wrong but I don’t think there were any “high yield” savings accounts for at least a decade or even more. All savings accounts I see are mostly below inflation or around the same. Where high yield for me would be at least 1% or 2% above inflation.

In the long run you aren't going to be beating inflation by 2% with your cash or equivalent (CDs, treasuries, repo, whatever). That's in the 0-1% above inflation range, and likely on the lower end of that scale.

Even intermediate or longer term bonds struggle to get 2% real returns.

But yea, "high yield" is a misleading name for savings accounts, and there isn't a huge point to it now, especially after the liquidity rules on government money markets got tighter after dodd frank.

There is still one benefit to having at least a month or two of expenses in a savings account though - FDIC. In an emergency that also crashes your bank, FDIC turnaround is like one business day. SIPC exists for brokerage holdings, but it is glacially slow by comparison.

Re: Banks Are Now Accused of Cheating Customers Billions

#73
post #61

Who has the best interest rates for idle cash? I have been using Marcus, but it is not a huge burden to shop around.

Wealthfront Cash is 5%

Do note that their backing bank is greendot. If you sign up with a custom email address (eg: not gmail/yahoo/outlook/etc), your wealthfront account will still be created, but stopped from actually opening an account for failing verification.

As for verification goes, it's a black box from greendot's side[1].

[1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/wealthfront/comments/11t7k56/wealth...

Re: Banks Are Now Accused of Cheating Customers Billions

#74
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One data point: IBKR pays you 4.83% right now so I think it's quite good. Not the full interest rate but it's a reasonable in my view payment for their service. They also pay you for every day the cash sits in the account. You can also buy any market funds and pay very little for the transaction. Just 2 days ago they also told me that I paid enough in market data refresh request (they are very explicit that those are…

If you're going to the effort of switching from 0.01% to market rates, you might as well go straight to Vanguard and get 5.2% and pay essentially nothing in other fees. I don't think there's much in the way of compelling reasons for retail investors to select IB.

I am in Europe so no Vanguard money funds for me (they need to publish KID and for tax reasons they need to be accumulating) but I have chosen one from Blackrock.

Re: Banks Are Now Accused of Cheating Customers Billions

#75

Not only because of interest payments banks defrauding customers but also due of hidden charges.

A month ago I got a mystery deposit then a letter explaining why I’d been given hundreds of dollars back from my bank… I’m thinking they were trying to get ahead of this kind of investigation.

The outstanding interest may have been given back to you by your bank.

Re: Banks Are Now Accused of Cheating Customers Billions

#77
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going to the effort of switching from 0.01% to market rates, you might as well go straight to Vanguard and get 5.2% and pay essentially nothing in other fees. I don't think there's much in the way of compelling reasons for retail investors to select IB.

I am in Europe so no Vanguard money funds for me (they need to publish KID and for tax reasons they need to be accumulating) but I have chosen one from Blackrock.

There’s a ton of Vanguard ETFs in Europe that are accumulating.

I believe in the US Vanguard has a retail service too, so you don’t need a broker as the middleman.

Re: Banks Are Now Accused of Cheating Customers Billions

#78
post #73
post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wealthfront Cash is 5%

Do note that their backing bank is greendot. If you sign up with a custom email address (eg: not gmail/yahoo/outlook/etc), your wealthfront account will still be created, but stopped from actually opening an account for failing verification. As for verification goes, it's a black box from greendot's side[1]. [1]: https://www.reddit.com/r/wealthfront/comments/11t7k56/wealth...

That hasn't been my experience. My email is at my own domain, and I haven't had a problem. However I opened my wealthfront account many years ago.
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