Best Savings/Checking Account Combo

Maybe people may already know this, but I am a sucker for playing the rate chase game when it comes to banking. I pretty much have an open account with majority of the online banks, as long as there is no monthly fee or minimum balance requirement. The problem is that majority of the online banks offer accounts, which have ATM access, but none of the fee free ATM's are near me or these ATM's do not accept deposits. I am trying to have my main savings and checking account at one bank, rather than having to transfer funds back and forth. The problem is that with the banks that do offer a high yield savings account they do not offer a checking account or vice versa. Another issue is that many of these high yield savings accounts are in fact money market accounts or have a monthly withdrawal limit.

Overall ING Orange Checking seems to offer the best rate (4.00% - lowest of the tiered rates offered) for a checking account, nor is there a monthly fee or minimum balance requirement. Plus this ING account offers a fee free ATM card that can be used for withdrawals at one of their many ATM locations nationwide. ING is part of the Allpoint ATM network. As far a savings account rate, the rate that ING offers for savings account is only 4.50%, which is not as good as many of today's online banks that offer rates between 5.00-6.00%.

Last month I learned about about Bank of America's affinity accounts with AAA and NEA, which offer high yield money market accounts. The rates have been around 5.07% or more. These rates are reevaluated every week, thus they change a tad every so often. Since my undergrad days I have had a free checking account with Bank of America, which I mainly used to deposit checks to and then transfer the funds to my online bank account. I figured if I opened one of these affinity accounts I could keep majority of my money with one bank now. In this case though I would loose out on a high yield checking account. Now my problem is should I go with a bank that offers a money market account with a high yield, but hardly anything for checking, or do I go with ING who offers an okay savings account rate, but higher than normal checking account rate?

For now I am using ING mainly for the checking, but using Bank of America for the money market account. Let me know your thoughts.

So I Have Not Kept Up

I just finished my last final for the Spring semester of my MBA classes, so now I will surely have more time for the next several weeks until when the summer semester starts. I will surely try to keep up with the blog this time. By being a daily reader of various other financial blogs it gave me some encouragement to continue blogging. On that note, I will continue my blogging!

Banking - Tackling Interest Earned as Being Taxed

I have been following various forums in regard to what is the best apr being offered by online banks. Like many others I also play the whole rate chasing game, where you dump your money into a bank account that currently offers the highest apr. I actually have made a decent amount by utilizing this strategy. Overall I'd like to one day see a bank where I get both the highest savings and checking account apr's, but until then I am currently utilizing ING's Orange Checking and a Bank of America Affinity money market account.

The one disadvantage I see with playing the rate chasing game is that the interest earned is taxable. How do you guys go about decreasing the amount taxed, more specifically do you guys deduct anything? One CPA who I talked to earlier mentioned that I could deduct the expenses related to making this money. For example I could deduct my cable internet costs, my computer's value, etc. Has anyone gone about making such deductions when rate chasing?

Back and Dedicated

So I kind of neglected the idea of having a blog. I was in a way questioning whether to still continue it or not and if it is going to help anyone. Pretty much I figured it is a good way for me to voice my ideas and if it helps anyone that will be great.

As far as new things overall my savings account looks much better. This is partially due to my tax refund as well as my annual bonus from my employer. I decided to open up a MMA with Bank of America. I can receiving the special intro rates for AAA members (at least for now my AAA was finally worth it to an extent). I had a huge problem with GMAC Bank when I went to transfer money from my account with GMAC to BoA. I wrote myself a $500 check just to try my new BoA MMA. The deposit went through properly, but GMAC Bank withdrew the check twice. For 4 days I lost $500. GMAC Bank admitted to the mistake and credited my account back along with a credit for lost interest. This still left a bad taste in my mouth in regard to GMAC Bank. Their error caused them to "steal'" my money and not say anything in regard to it, until I contacted their customer support line.

Recently I was looking to get into playing some golf. I got some clubs from a coworker for only $20, but I still need a bag, which I will worry about later once I get all of his clubs. Last week I decided that my reel mower was a pain to use and that I need a cheap gas push mower. I placed an ad on Craigslist for my reel mower and within 30 mins I got several emails from interested parties. The next day I showed the reel mower to a person who was interested and they purchased the mower from me for $40. Not bad since I bought it last year for only $25 from another guy who posted the reel mower on Craigslist. I don't want to pay someone $15-$25/month to cut my grass so this further justified my thinking of getting a gas mower. WalMart has a $109 gas lawn mower that is very basic but it uses a Briggs and Stratton motor. My dad had a Briggs and Stratton lawn mower that lasted 20 years, so I trust their motors. The lawn mower I bought also hardly takes any space, which is perfect when storing it.

Overall these are the most recent financial changes.