Got an email this morning from HSBC. Their Online savings account is now offering 6% interest on new money (meaning anything above your balance as of the close of business last Friday) until April 30. Looks like it’s time for me to do my credit card application/balance transfer spree…

28-day T-Bill rates have been dropping recently. Today’s auction’s yield was 4.681% as compared to 4.727% last week and 4.783% the week before. The 91 and 182-day rates by contrast have been rising in the last few weeks.

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I was speaking to a representative from a local bank here in Michigan on Friday.  He was in my office trying to sell the employees on switching to his bank as they are offering free checking with no minimum balance requirements.

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I’ve still got a couple thousand dollars from our last 0% balance transfer sitting at Netbank earning a yawn-inspiring 3.52%. I’ve been moving it to HSBC in $5,000 blocks by buying 28 day T-Bills every week. This is a great way to avoid losing interest on the money in transit, though I probably break even by keeping it at Netbank for the extra few weeks…

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About a month ago I opened a $2000 one year CD with Netbank in response to an offer I saw after logging in.  The CD is paying 5.01% and with a $2000 deposit had a reward of a $50 Netbank gift card.

This works out to a 7.5% return on the money, currently the best rate I have for guaranteed savings.

The offer is not so hot now, although the CD is now paying 5.2%, you need a minimum deposit of $5000 in order to get a $25 gift card.   Not a great reward but the CD rate is attractive.

Received the following this morning in email from HSBC:

We are writing to let you know that beginning May 1, 2006, your HSBCdirect Online Savings Account rate will change to 4.50% APY**. This is one of America’s leading rates and still 8x the national average*, so you can continue to watch your money grow.

With HSBCdirect.com, there are no fees, no minimums, no lock-up period, and your money is FDIC insured.† You can stay confident your money is in the right place and earning the most it possibly can.

Add more money to your HSBCdirect Online Savings Account today at www.hsbcdirect.com and make the most of your savings.

Thanks for growing your money with HSBCdirect.

Your HSBCdirect Customer Service Team

So a drop from their 4.8% promo rate but still not bad. My guess is that they will continue to lag behind the Fed funds rate for the time being which at the moment is 4.75%. The Feds will likely raise the rate again at least once but we’re probably getting closer to the top.

First off, my wife received the balance of her severance. Overall it worked out to about 10 months’ worth of take-home pay, mainly because we no longer had the car lease payments being taken out of her checks. We’ve got a decent war chest now. In fact, I think we have a bit too much money in the savings accounts. CDs don’t really make sense right now, we’re getting 4.8% at HSBC on the savings. Perhaps I’ll just move a slightly bigger amount of money into the brokerage account and find some more individual stocks to buy.

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As I mentioned in my last post, I moved about 1/3 of my 0% credit card balance funds to a 3 month (91 day) treasury bill last week. Something interesting came out of this. The T-Bill was scheduled to be issued on Thursday (1/26). I have it set up to pull the money from my Netbank Savings account but had forgotten this and transferred the money to my checking account. When TD attempted to pull the money, there were insufficient funds (costing me $30 :/ ). The bill was still issued on 1/26 however and the money did not get pulled from my account until today (1/31). Obviously I didn’t make anything on this transaction (the $30 represents a decent chunk of the interest I’ll be earning from the T-Bill) The extra 5 days the money sat in the savings account earned some of that back however.

I hadn’t seen much need to do so until now but Ing Direct has a ‘Winter Save Up Sale’ going on right now. From now until April 15th you earn 4.75% on all new money deposited to your account! That deal beats my HSBC account hands down although you need to keep the money there for a few days to make up for the lost interest during the transfer.

If you don’t have an Ing account and would like one email me and I’ll send you a referral. Deposit $250 and you get a $25 bonus (disclosure: I get $10 if you do this…). Free money is always good…

Went to check my HSBC balance today and noticed they’ve bumped their interest rate to 4.25%. That’s the best I’ve seen anywhere and certainly kicks the crap out of Virtualbanks 3.55% rate. I imagine some of the other banks will follow suit shortly but so far I’ve been very happy with HSBC and plan to keep using them as my primary bank. I may even just close my Virtualbank account, especially now that I’ve linked my TreasuryDirect account to HSBC and Netbank.

Kind of a pity that my current 0% balance is coming due and we haven’t gotten any new offers. The best I’ve seen recently is 1.99% for the life of the balance which isn’t bad but is not enough of a return after tax to make it worth my while.

For those of you who don’t have an account already there is a $25 account opening bonus available. Details (courtesy of FatWallet):

http://hsbcdirect.com/1/start.htm
Promo Code: start