New high-yield online savings account: TIAA Direct

Quote from J3ff : I honestly dont even have enough "savings" to make it worth it... I'm just dumping everything into retirement hoping that when i'm 60 I'll have enough to buy a 50 ft boat and retire on it.

Same here, preferably a 52'-58' Rybovich.

the stock market is a gamble.

Just pay down your debt, its equivalent to putting money in a savings account and getting 3+%. Easy for me to say when I have over 400k in student loan debt between myself and the wife and car debt...

I'm thinking of repping this soon (actually I'll probably do the Money Market). It is between this and Ally bank (which I've been reading some terrible reviews about). I understand it's new and the rate will probably lower. I'll write up my experience if/when I go through with it.

What terrible reviews have you read about Ally? Please do tell...

I opened an account with TIAA a month ago, lured in by this interest rate (I closed my HSBC account, which, yes, 4 years ago was more than 4%, now .25% or something pathetic).

My experience has been positive so far! I hope the interest rate holds up for a while.

Anyone try adding this account to Mint? I cannot for the life of me add it and I've been back and forth with tech support on Mint.

**Rates may change at any time without prior notice, before or after the account is opened**

Quote from genkisam : Anyone try adding this account to Mint? I cannot for the life of me add it and I've been back and forth with tech support on Mint.

I tried.. and tried. Mint said to keep trying to login until you have hit and answered all the security questions, but I've seen all the questions pop up at least 2x and no go.

Let me know if you get this resolved in some way.

Some people have said in reviews that you need FICO of 750+ and that only 10% of applicants are accepted. Also something about beneficiaries. Do they allow joint accounts? So many questions, but they are so new that it's hard to know what's what.

I need to change from AMEX soon. Took money out of mutual funds for various reasons. Is it worth rate chasing? Maybe I'll open up more than one account at some of these.

Quote from branddc : **Rates may change at any time without prior notice, before or after the account is opened**

All banks, etc say this afaik.

Quote from cwbaker : I tried.. and tried. Mint said to keep trying to login until you have hit and answered all the security questions, but I've seen all the questions pop up at least 2x and no go. Let me know if you get this resolved in some way.

No dice. Apparently others are having same issue http://satisfaction.mint.com/mint/tags/tiaa_cref

Their money market account has the same rate too. (1.240 %. I think I will go for it.
Advantage I see is you get checks versus the HY savings.

I feel like Slickdeals often draws people's attention to negligible savings instead of the big picture. If someone already has an account paying 0.85%, an extra 0.4% is almost nothing, and there's no guarantee the rates will stay high. After tax, even 1.25% is almost nothing. Let's focus on the big picture. Put money in a reward checking account and I Bonds first. If you max that out, then learn about investing. The average dividend of S&P 500 stocks is over 2% and that includes companies like Google that don't pay dividends but still make money.

I sure wish I knew about I Bonds and other bonds when interest rate was higher instead of chasing high yield savings accounts and 1 year CDs.