Why big banks are bad places for your money
I’m never going to be honored by any banker as a person of the year, let me tell you. I’m always on a slow burn about the banks because banks are not putting the public interest first. This comes up repeatedly and we have bailed out the banks again and again.
It is the worst possible thing: private gain, public loss because we’ve had to do these bailouts of the banks. Basically, nobody ever went to prison for all the banking scandals that became known 16 years ago.
And they keep saying, “Hey, we’re not going be bad anymore.” And then another thing erupts with them. I mean I’m on slow burn about this. It’s absolutely true.
And then I read this in the Wall Street Journal. Okay, this is really something. So Chase Bank, according to Wall Street Journal research is still paying one 100th of a percent on their savings accounts.
I want you to think about that. You can go online today without breaking a sweat. You can earn five plus percent on your savings. Five plus percent! And Chase is paying one 100th to 1%. Wells Fargo is paying 0.15%. So they’re paying 15 times nothing basically.
The average bank, the average bank is paying less than one-half a percent. Just ripping off their customers left and right and center. And we’re letting them do it with trillions of dollars that people are putting in savings or CDs with these stinking banks who are happy to raise the interest rates on all their loans. Happy to charge a 22% average interest rate on a credit card, but instead are going to pay you basically nothing on your savings.
On the same day that The Wall Street Journal story appeared, there was a story in USA Today where they surveyed, what were you making if you put money in CDs that are FDIC-insured through my three favorite children: Fidelity Investments, Charles Schwab and Vanguard.
What are you earning by comparison? I’m so glad you asked. The rates you’re earning, depending on exactly when you check and the length of the CD, are often from five and three-quarters percent to a low of 5.45%.
So this is a really good time to treat yourself as an early Christmas gift.
Lock in some money that you don’t need right away in CDs where you can earn fiveplus percent for whatever length term you’re interested in.