As I continue my quest to financially secure my future, I find myself searching for a safe but beneficial place for my hard earned dollars. This quest is partially sparked by my recent following of Ramit’s I will teach you to be rich blog and book. Also, it plays to my own philosophy of getting the most possible from every one of my hard earned dollars. Now granted any of these things can change as the underlying bank sees fit. But luckily that helps me as well because it means I can write additional posts updating everyone on the current rates and who has the highest.

   Currently as of June it seems that the best option is Chesapeake Bank’s Clear Sky checking and savings. This is entirely based on numbers which currently stand at 1.74 percent for Checking with a minimum balance of $1 and no monthly fees. The Clear Sky Checking account also includes waiving up to $20 of foreign bank ATM fees. Like many other online banks they offer free Bill pay as well. Ramit recommends Charles Schwab which from the demo looks very good but they only give you .75 percent interest. Granted neither of these options are even keeping up with inflation but why not get the 1.74 percent  for the same effort.

   The nice thing about Chesapeake Bank’s online offerings is they have one of the best Savings interest rates as well. With the Clear Sky Savings you get an annual percentage yield of  2.05 percent . As with their checking there is no fees and a minimum balance of a $1. Here is a post with varied comments to help you with your research, CLICKME. One of the comments includes the link to an outside party who rates banks and apparently they gave Chesapeake 4 stars. Someone mentioned that they compound monthly as being a negative but the fact is if you are comparing APY to APY , then daily versus monthly will have very little impact. Here is a great article that gives a more detailed example at MyMoneyBlog.com .

   To conclude my post, the Clear Sky savings and checking from Chesapeake Bank allows you to get a good interest rate and have your money in one place. You may want to say, “But Matt I have found better rates, what about SmartPig.” I checked it out and even though they are offering 3.05 percent it seems like they are looking to lock you in for a period of time. Because of this it does not see very useful since it appears they would discourage transferring money in and out before your savings goal has been reached. If you agree or disagree please let me know, and especially leave a comment if you know of better deals that we can utilize.

Matt