Best Bank Rates

Bank of America is giving away $75 bucks for free when you open a new checking account and meet the following requirements:

1. Open your BofA checking account by July 31, 2009
2. Make at least one Bank of America Check Card transaction within 30 days
3. Maintain a $500 minimum balance in your new checking account for the first 30 days
4. Mention offer code ZJVSF0509 when opening the account

Nowadays, it’s all about saving your money because of the rocky economy and job uncertainty. Put it in the bank, invest it, hide it under the mattress, whatever you do, don’t spend it! But how will the economy ever bounce back if no one spends any money? If you’ve been saving responsibly, you’ve probably built up a nice cushion by now. ING Direct is offering a $50 bonus on everyday purchases like gas and groceries.
If you don’t have an ING Electric Orange checking account, you’ll need to open one by May 31, 2009 and enter Reference Code EM258 to be eligible for the $50. Then, use your Debit MasterCard® to make 3 signature-based transactions within the first 45 days. On day 50, they’ll deposit $50 in your account. Your Electric Orange checking account will include a Debit MasterCard® for purchases, access to 35,000 free ATMs and online bill pay. Visit ingdirect.com/electric50 for more information.

U.S. First Credit Union has high interest checking account rates at 4.50% APY. This rate only applies to checking account balances of $10,000 or less. All money in the account over $10000 earns NO INTEREST. There is a minimum opening deposit of $25 and a monthly service fee of $10.

The most interest earned on any given month with this 4.5% annual percentage rate is about $37.50. Subtract the ten dollar monthly service fee and there remains $27.50 in interest earned per month. The minimum to keep in this checking account is about $2666 to break even with the monthly service charge.

US First Credit Union is NCUA insured for up to $250,000 per account holder for a total of up to $500,000 per bank.

evantage bank has best checking account rates at an amazing 5.25% APY. This is definitely one of the highest current interest checking account rates out there right now. There isn’t even a minimum balance so there are no monthly account maintenance fees. evantagebank.com’s high yield checking account rate is 5.25% APY on the first $25,000 of the account balance. Then the remaining balance over $25,000 earns a lower rate even though this rate is far better than some 1 year CDs right now: 2.25% APY.

There’s only one requirement that must be met in order to receive this best checking account rate:
Just make 10 Evantage MasterCard (their provided debit card) transactions per month.
That’s it! Real easy to do: use it to buy coffee and the 10 purchases per month are easily completed. EvantageBank is FDIC insured for up to $250,000 for single accounts and up to $500,000 for joint accounts.

central pacific bank pays up to 4.00% apy interest on their online checking account! open a free plus checking account with them to get this high yield checking account interest rate. there are a significant requirements and restrictions regarding this top online checking account rate:

1. a minimum of 15 purchases must be posted to the account per calendar month with the provided central pacific bank visa check card (this is a debit card that will deduct money from the checking account). additional purchases past the first 15 do not roll over to be counted on the next month.
2. there must be at least one direct deposit into this interest bearing checking account per month.
3. must be enrolled in check safekeeping service every month (customers can still view checks online).
4. the 4.00% high interest rate only applies if all of the above conditions are met and only to balances under $25000. addiitional funds in the account in excess of $25000 will only earn the lower rate (currently .05% apy).

given this information one can calculate the most interest interest earned in any given month with the high rate: about 83 bucks (figured it out with this cd interest calculator). not too shabby if all the requirements are met every single month and there is only $25,000 in the account. there’s no reason to keep more than the max since a higher interest rate can be earned from many different online banks. as a matter of fact many normal investment banks have higher rates than .05% on most no risk investments.