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Washington Mutual Online Savings AccountRates and Account Review Last Update: March 28, 2008
If you've chosen to deposit your money at one of the big moneycenter banks, you most likely did so because of the convenience of having an ATM at every corner, not because of the great rates. But sacrificing high rates for convenience is not necessary anymore at Washington Mutual.
The Online Savings Account from Washington Mutual pays the high rates that savers want while offering the conveniences that a big bank like Washington Mutual can offer.
Yield Trend
Account Features
*The savings account does not have a monthly fee as long as the checking relationship is maintained.
Account Review
Washington Mutual has followed another big bank's lead, Citibank, by offering a checking account and high-yield online saving account package.
Since it is a package deal, customers must have a checking account at Washington Mutual to get the high yield on the savings account.
Washington Mutual used to require that a checking account had to be opened at the same time as the Online Savings account. This was a bit of a hassle for customers who already had a WaMu checking account who then had to open a new account to take advantage of the savings account. But according to WaMu's web site, customers can now link their existing active WaMu checking account to the new Online Savings account to get the high rate.
Without a checking account, the savings account will earn the seriously lower statement savings account rate. Plus, you will need to maintain a minimum balance of $300 each day of the monthly statement cycle to avoid the monthly service charge amount of $4. Keep that in mind if you ever think about moving your checking account to a different bank.
The benefit of this kind of package deal, as opposed to using a separate high-yield account (such as from Emigrant Direct), is that all your banking can be done at one place. There's no need to access multiple online banking platforms to transfer your money from your Internet savings account to your checking account. Plus, you won't have to wait days for the money to transfer between accounts like you would if the accounts were at different banks.
When Washington Mutual came out with the online savings account offer, the yield on the savings account was 5.00% annual percentage yield (apy) which was lower than many other online savings accounts. There was concern that when rate cuts were made, this account would get slashed to the levels you'd expect to see at a big bank.
As it turned out, Washington Mutual's Online Savings account held up far better than many of the other high-yield accounts. As of July 2008, you can get a better savings account rate with WaMu than you can from original online banks like ING DIRECT and Emigrant Direct.
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