Wednesday, April 27, 2011

What Must You Look For Best Saving Accounts


Most people begin their financial journey by opening a regular account which they use for nothing more than depositing and issuing checks. A lot of these people allow money to remain in these accounts till it reaches a particular amount and then they begin looking at options for saving accounts. It is needless to mention why people would want the best saving accounts they can get at this stage, because their financial life is almost on the verge of or already has become stable. The account they are opening now is an instrument of savings.

Probably you are contemplating on opening a saving account too. If you are doing that, there are certain things you must look for. One of the first things that you have to remember is that the bank where you have your regular account is not necessarily the bank with the best saving accounts too. With a saving account, the stakes are higher because banks have to pay you interest on the deposits that you make. Naturally, the bank that can provide you the best rate of interest will be the best saving account bank for you. But there are some other considerations to make here.

Here we list the four important points you have to look at when you are scouting for banks that can provide best saving accounts.

(i)            The first thing you have to look at is naturally the rate of interest. Since it is the bank that will be paying you the interest, you have to select the bank that provides you the highest rate of interest. This should be one of the primary points that you should be looking at, but certainly it should not be the only point.

(ii)           The second thing you need to check is the amount that the bank needs you to deposit so that you can open the account. Different financial institutions have different limits here and hence you need to ask them personally or check their written brochures.

(iii)          Since these are savings accounts, you will need to keep some amount in the bank each month. This amount is called as minimum deposit. It acts as a kind of security for the bank as well as it helps you to really save that amount of money, adding more meaning to the concept of savings accounts. But you have to see if you can really afford to keep this minimum deposit with the bank because if your total deposited amount goes less than this, you will have to pay an additional charge.

(iv)         There may also be a limit on the number and the amount of withdrawals that you make from the savings account. See if that meets your needs. With some banks, you can make more withdrawals than the number that they allow but you will have to pay an additional charge for that.

(v)          One more point that you have to check is the notice period before you can make a withdrawal, which is typical of most savings accounts. If this period stretches out to too long (in some banks it could be as much as three months), the account may not be suitable to your needs.

Hence, choosing best saving accounts is not a very easy task because there are several things that you need to consider. But being aware of what you need to look at, you are liable to make a better decision.

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