Swiftcurrent Reflections: May 2007

Are you Interested?

I've talked to a couple people about high interest savings accounts lately, so I wanted to put the info down here. Currently, my credit union, which I love, is giving 0.5% on the standard savings account. What does that mean? Start with $1000 and in a year, you will gain $5. Yup, that's it. Now, they do have some special accounts that have a higher yield if you keep a lot more money in there, but they are still way below what you can get with online banking.

I am currently using GMAC Bank and getting 5.3% annual return. So, if I had that same $1000, I would now get $53 back over a year, or a 10x increase. To put that another way, at 0.5%, it would take 139 years for $1000 to double to $2000. At 5.3%, it would take less than 14 years. Currently, all of my non-retirement savings is here.

Is it secure? All of the different options I looked at were offered by well known institutions, and all were FDIC insured. Banks will have different options. For instance, with GMAC, I had to open with at least $500, I have to keep at least a $500 balance to avoid fees, but I get free checking. Others may have opening balance requirement, but then no minimum. Some offer checks, some don't.

How to choose? Then best way I found is to use Bankrate.com. They show many different banks with all of their options, requirements, and even ratings.

Happy earning!

Flying Update!

Created with Paul's flickrSLiDR.

Last night I went to EAA Chapter 105's meeting that was held at Van's Aircraft in Aurora. It was fun to go and see where they design and make the kits for these very cool planes. The day was beautiful, so many people flew in. Thus a good number of planes were there to look at. I took many pictures and a couple of videos (one, two) of the goings on.

As for me, with this morning's lesson, I have 6.6 hours in the log book. I did my first landing on Wednesday night, so starting to work on those pretty hard (hard as in doing it a lot, and as in the punishment I'm giving the tarmac). I'm off to Eugene with the lovely Meg for the weekend, then in LA for most of next week, so flight training is on hold for a few days. I will be studying the books, however.