What??

I just logged in to my ING Direct account, and guess what?

The US$ savings account dropped from 3.75% to 3.00% interest rate.

What's with the sudden, dramatic drop? I've got to get my money out of there.

HSBC Trying to Keep Up with ING Direct

Ok, so ING Direct's savings account is going up to 3.75% on September 1st. Now HSBC is trying to keep up by going up to 3.75% also.

I suppose none of this really matters since PC Financial is still ahead of the pack. I just hope that PC Financial will move up to 4.25% for no good reason. But as long as I'm dreaming, I may as well hope I win the lottery. :)

ING Direct Rates Going Up

ING Direct's Investment Savings Account (ISA) is going up from 3.50% to 3.75% on September 1st. I think they're trying to keep all of the customers they got from the Summer Savings Sale. But PC Financial is still higher at 4.00%.

August is Expensive And Other Random Crap

August is going to be expensive because my lease is up at the end of the month and my job is going to be over, so I'm going to be picking up and moving again, this time to another city. The car rental place told me it would cost $80 to rent a car for a day, plus the cost of gas.

I'm going to be starting another job in two weeks' time. I've been spoiled the last while because my current job has a very relaxed dress code. I usually wear a tank top, a tshirt over it, and jeans. But my new job is much more corporate so I'm going to have to start investing in actual work appropriate pieces. I guess it's about time; in a year I'll be done school anyway!

Today I picked up a pair of pants for $19.99, marked down from $89.99. I'm happy because I already had the matching blazer and pencil skirt as my one expensive interview suit. I also got a dress slip today that I've been watching like a hawk. For the last few weeks, I would walk in the store once a week on the way home to see if they had gone on sale. They went from $24.99 down to $19.99 and then down again to $11.99 today, so I finally picked one up.

In other news, I'm so not loving HSBC right now because they take way too long to transfer money. The other thing is that their website is pretty vague and not as straight forward as ING's. I might just keep my money in ING after all that hassle.

Lastly... I am almost done writing my undergraduate thesis! I plan on treating myself to something, but I'm not sure what. We'll see.

US$ Account not CDIC Insured

I just found out that my US$ bank account is not CDIC insured. I always thought that if the CDN account was CDIC insured, then so would the USD account. Now that I think about it, I guess it makes a lot of sense. Then again, it's not like the US$ is going to collapse any time soon.

I'm on the hunt for high interest rates again. Some US$ accounts available in Canada:
Altamira at 4.75%
ING Direct at 3.50%
eTrade at 4.75%

I have some more comparing to do to figure out which ones have the least charges/fees and stuff.

A $3.50 Sigh of Relief

A few days ago I checked my ING Direct account to see how much interest I made for the month of July, and was alarmed when I did my math and saw that I was short $3.50 in my account. Now, normally, I'm not the type of person to sweat things like that, (oh, who am I kidding?) but I was kind of nervous that they'd made a bank error. I decided to wait a few days to let it sort itself out, and today I logged on to see that the $3.50 is now safely in my account. I guess someone had a programming glitch when they were calculating balances due to the new summer savings sale.

Sigh.

Chasing Interest Rates

I recently found out about HSBC's new online savings account, which is just like ING Direct's online banking system. ING right now is at 4.25% whereas HSBC is at 5.00%--although both are at promotional rates and go back down to 3.50% afterwards.

The funny thing about these differences in interest rates (0.75%) is that it's really not that much. Unless you have a boatload of cash sitting around, chasing interest rates isn't necessarily that worth it, in my opinion. I feel like it's those people who line up at the gas station just cause gas is under a dollar. Let's say gas is usually about $1.03 per litre, and today you see it's at $0.99 per litre. People go, "wow! It's under a dollar!" and go and fill up. Well, suppose that's four cents savings for a 30 litre tank. That's saving $1.20 by filling up there. I'm sure somebody will say, oh, $1.20 adds up and whatnot, but filling up at those times probably requires waiting three times as long to fill up because of the long lines. In the same way, unless you have $10 000 to park in a savings account, the interest rate difference from 4.25% to 5.00% isn't really much.

However, I'm a student, and I have student loan debt looming over my head everyday. I also have all of my assets pretty liquid because I am saving for my exchange term next year. So, 0.75% interest is a big deal to me.

I've had an account with ING Direct for awhile now. (Leave me a message and I'll refer you so we can each get $13!) I love banking with them because they make everything so simple. Whenever I call them, I don't have to wait long to get a person to speak to instead of a machine. And I always get high interest rates with them.

I just signed up for the HSBC savings account last week and I'm just waiting while the account starts up. I'm not sure what's supposed to happen and I'm confused already. Basically I don't know when my account is set up until I notice they've cashed my initial deposit. Then I'm supposed to call them, I think... I'm going to write more about it once I figure out what's going on.