If you are a member of Parents and Teachers Association (local or national), you can join Alliant.

And I'm going to further state the obvious, a credit union is not intended to make a profit. They exist for their members (who are alos shareholders). Lending money at low rates, give high rates of interest on deposits, stuff like that. I'm going to continue to dispute your allegation that Alliant is facing liquidity issues until the cows come home. Their stated goal (on the first page of their annual report, no less) is to return profits made on lending in the form of higher rates to their depositors.

Again, be suspicious all you want. I don't care. Due to it being backed by the federal government, Alliant is as sound as any Bank in the US is. I'm starting my 3rd year of high rates on passbook and checking. You can choose to get a great 2% rate and be completely liquid, or can choose to get a 2% rate with a 24/36 month CD. The choice is up to you.

Out of curiosity, what institution is paying you 1.65% on passbook savings?

Ally bank is paying 1.75% on its savings account. www.ally.com

Ally is the new name for GMAC. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ally_Bank

1.75% is great, and they have been running ads all over the place. Hopefully they will keep this up.

Guaranty Bank has an AA miles deal similar to BankDirect. Though other liquid accounts get a whooping 1.75-2.00% interest, if you knock 40% off just because of federal and state income taxes, the whooping 1.75-2.00% interest turns into peanuts, practically anyway. So at present, Guaranty Bank has a lot of my liquid savings at the moment.
EverBank is another institution worth checking out. There's possibilities of hotel points or something like that. However, the bigger value is that EverBank enables convenient openings of holdings of non-USD currency CD's, accounts, precious metals, etc. With the USD ready to get smashed as a consequence to our current congress' outlandish spending, diversifying one's assets is a thought worth considering.

I guess few people really care any more about information like this:

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/...aranty-tx.html

Indeed... Does the poster know Guaranty Bank failed on Aug 21?!

And talk about CDs... The infamous Citi has ad all over the place here, paying 2.xx % on an 18 month CD but you must have a checking account to go with it. This is South Florida where lots and lots of retirees live on their interest earnings from CDs. Talk about unintended consequences ... Those who paid off their mortgages, live within their means (pension+SS+dividends, are getting 0 assistance from government and suffers the most, thru absolutely no fault of their own - the interest / dividend income went from steady 4 to 5% to now near 0. My neighbor just took her money from a matured Wachovia CD to Citi and the rep told her she only need $100 bal in her checking account, and she can close the checking account after 3 months...
Talk about desperation... and if I remember it correctly, government de facto owns 1/3 of Citi now.

Send her to Alliant. 2% payable monthly. She can get a free debit card to use for fee free withdrawals too.

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You got to be kidding to suggest Alliant to a 77 years old lady who barely able to use her AOL account to read email..., who actually goes to Citi branch every month to pay her card bill at the counter... and never use online anything... :rolleyes:

Her CD pays monthly interest as well - any CD above 6 months long I believe by law has to offer 2 options - either compounded in with the principal or take it out every month.

Happy and skofarell, drop it you two. One likes alliant and the other doesn't - we got the message quite a few posts back. Your sniping at each other is derailing this thread. I for one would like to hear some creative strategies from others on where to stash liquid cash in this economy and hopefully get some miles/points in the process.

Thanks for the advice rkjflyer1. I hadly think 4-5 posts is derailing a thread, but by now you've probably already figured out that your options are pretty slim.

The bank that was offering miles for deposits has gone under.

You can park money in an interest bearing account at Fidelity or TD Ameritrade for 6 months to get bonuses for opening accounts with AA, Delta, and a few others. Its a one time shot, and since you've been a member since 2001, I'm guessing you already exhausted those. If you haven't, check out "financial partners" for your favorite Frequent Flyer program's website.

You can also buy a house and get miles for the mortgage, but I've found those offers to pretty much suck interest rate wise.

That's pretty much it. Interest bearing accounts with banks exist. But there are no miles. http://www.bankrate.com

:td:

Didn't mia already give you a compelling example on AA miles with Bankdirect? That is about as many miles you can get and at a "perceived" high rate of return, depends of course, how you value your miles and would you actually pay out of pocket to buy a $2200 TATL biz tkt. I for one, think mia's option is as good as it can get, especially for anyone who would not travel international longhaul anything less than business class.

If there are any more better options, people would have posted by now. :rolleyes:

^

Excellent summary!

Just want to add: HELOC also has miles earning partner, but unlike a mortgage, you dont necessarily need to actually tab on the line. You do need, however, to make sure the fees if there are any, associate with the cancellation of the HELOC. Sometimes you may get lucky that you decided not to go thru the process after all, but the bonus miles still found their way home to your account! Happened to a friend. Naturally, you cannot count on that!

Oh, don't get me started on the current policy. It's amazing at all these bleeding hearts for both morons who bought houses at the height of the most obvious bubble in the history of bubbles, perhaps only out done by the Dutch and their tulip bulbs nearly 370 years ago. Some how believe a policy of bailing out and now proving that our banking system is a cartel run by the Federal Reserve, not happy with artificially setting the cost of credit to near zero, but, actually out right debasing our savings (quantitative easing), is even going to help the indebted house speculator (I refuse to use the term 'home owner'). Effectively the bank issued in the form of credit (on literally so few reserves that you could pretty much call it 'out of thin air') is being monetized (i.e. not just a claim on a house anymore, they're being monetized out of their poor position), at the expense of anyone 'foolish enough' to have thought savings and capital formation is what brings prosperity and independence. How dare we think that you should spend less than you earn?

I did say 'oh don't get me started...' right :)

On the bright side, these piss poor interest rates prove I'm not forgoing much income parking my money in one of man kinds oldest currencies. Then again, I wouldn't be surprised to see some thing similar to an executive order 6102 -- for the 'good of America' of course, at some time in the future.

There is confusion.

GuarantyBank has been seized and sold by the FDIC. It's too soon to know if their AAdvantage mileage account will continue.

The institution mentioned in post 2 is BankDirect, which is entirely separate.