ING Direct Lowering Interest Rate
September 19, 2007

It was bound to happen, ING's begun lowering their interest rate from 4.5% to 4.3%. That's still worlds better than a brick'n'mortar especially when combined with how kick-ass their other services are. I'll stick with them, for sure, but it's a sign of the times.

Do you remember opening a bank account as a kid and being amazed at the powers of compounding interest? Do you think that parents still do that with their kids today?

ING Actually Mentioned in College!
September 18, 2007

Something rather amazing happened yesterday while at school. One of my professors actually demonstrated a bit of real world knowledge! The professor was discussing the inanity of government taxation on ordinary savings accounts and actually dropped some props to ING! Working everything out, your typical brick'n'mortar bank yields around 0.001% monthly interest on your savings - meanwhile (I believe, it's been awhile since I ran the numbers) ING actually offers you 0.01% monthly interest - meaning that you actually accrue a meaningful amount of money from saving for Uncle Sam to tax as compared to the tenths of pennies that he tries to dig out ordinarily.

Anyway, I'm still continuing to love my ING Electric Orange checking account in addition to the kick-ass savings account that I've got. I can't believe how much money I've lost over the years by not choosing a good banking institution. Goooo meaningful interest!

First Round of Bills with ING Electric Orange
August 03, 2007

ING Electric Orange is the great new checking service from ING that provides you a kick-ass checking account with great interest and introductory cash-back. The catch? No paper checks. Well, here in America that makes life a little difficult since very few businesses accept (in a rational way) credit-card based payments for monthly bills. So, what's a boy to do? Well, the ING Electric Orange account takes care of you by allowing you to order pre-written checks and have them mailed out to you.

I've written about my Electric Orange account before, but now our first round of bills at the house are rolling in. The process of ordering pre-written checks has been pretty good so far. The checks take roughly three days from date of ordering to arrive at your house (or to the business) and then you can do what you need to with them after that. There's two downsides to this approach. The first is that the money is immediately withdrawn from your account, even before the check is sent. This can be an annoyance when you have a recipient who takes their time when cashing a check (*ahem* Me *ahem*).

The other problem is that the check is mailed addressed to the recipient of the check. So, if you have strict mail-people or a forward setup you will have issues getting your check. Specifically, we had our rent check mailed to us (and addressed to The Manager) but it ended up being forwarded to The Manager without any notice to us. That freaked us out a good bit, but we got everything settled.

So, is it worth the hassle? I think so. For the price of having to think ahead and sort out the mail forwarding thing, I get to earn a decent amount of interest and cash back. How much? For somewhere around $1000 of spending and a pretty consistent $200 balance, I've gotten back $19 in interest and cash-back rewards (real cash, not stupid gift certificates). I also get great integration with my ING Savings account which allows me to easily transfer money back and forth at the drop of a hat.

So, thanks ING! You've made saving worth it again.

ING Updates
February 17, 2007

So, I've been with ING almost two months now and I wanted to give an update. They're simply phenomenal. For the last five years I've /wasted/ so much money by leaving it in a traditional bank that it's amazing. The 4.5%APR beats the pants off of any brick'n'mortar that will give me an ambiguous 0.04% something rate. On $3,000 (which is what I had in there at one time) in Wells Fargo I'm lucky to earn more than 51c in a month with their second-to-best plan. Of course, I can lose that in a heart-beat if I (for instance) have to draw tuition money and go below $2,000 in that account in order to incur.... CHARGES-ARGES-ARGES-arges.

ING's transfers are painless and usually take less than one week to complete. Then, the money's happily sitting in its new home actually accruing interest to combat inflation. So, joyous day - ING has gotten me happily saving!

Taking the Plunge, ING Direct
January 05, 2007

Well, I was talking with one of my co-workers today and she made mention of her ING Direct savings account. I have a number of finance and accounting blogs in my RSS feed and I've been hearing a lot of good things about them. I decided today that I'm closing up my TCF account (my real money is elsewhere, I don't use TCF) and signing up with ING. I'm currently getting a 4.50% APY which is far better than the paltry 0.04% that I'm getting through my current bank.

Well, if you're interested in an ING account yourself - keep an eye out here. I'll be posting updates on my experiences with them.