Anyone have experience with Brink's 5% savings account?
Down in the Fine Print are these points to consider for the limit: For an average daily balance up to but not exceeding $5,000.00, the interest rate for the Savings Account is 4.91% with an annual   percentage yield (APY) of 5.00%. For that portion of the average daily balance of the Savings Account that is $5,000.01, or more, the interest rate is 0.49% with an annual   percentage yield (APY) of 0.50%. The interest rates and APYs of each tier may change. The APYs were   accurate as of March 1, 2014. These are promotional rates and may   change without notice pursuant to applicable law. No minimum balance   necessary to open Savings Account or obtain the yield(s). Because   Savings Account funds are withdrawn through the Card Account (maximum   6 such transfers per calendar month), Card Account transaction fees   could reduce the interest earned on the Savings Account. Card Account   and Savings Account funds are FDIC-insured upon verification of   Cardholder's identity. For purposes of FDIC coverage limit, all funds   held on deposit by the Cardholder at BofI Federal Bank will be   aggregated up to the coverage limit, currently $250,000.00.
I'm looking for another one right now. Here's what I've found: Los Alamos National Bank (www.lanb.com) has tokens ($5?), but I think they only open accounts for New Mexico residents. I've had one for several years. USAA Savings Bank (usaa.com) has tokens ($5 or free, I don't remember). I'm pretty sure you do NOT need to be a USAA member to open an account. I've had one for a couple of years. Several banks (Frost Bank, American National Bank of Texas, Amegy Bank, and probably many, many more) offer them as part of their Treasury Management accounts, meant for big businesses and charged for accordingly. Happy State Bank (in, where else, Happy, Texas) has a web page saying they have them but their services charges were more than I wanted to pay. ClearSky Bank (an Internet bank started by Chesapeake Bank) claims on their web page to have them but I haven't verified that yet. Still looking... Your plan will probably work. I speak from past experience approx 5-10 years ago, when Lloyds used to offer tiered interest of up to 4% on £5000 in their Vantage accounts. It was allowed for an individual person to have up to three Vantage accounts. The criteria for obtaining the headline interest rates were simply: What I, and many others, did was to set up three Vantage accounts, call them A, B, and C, and a standing order on each to transfer minimum amount + £1 on the same day each month in this manner: This satisfied the letter of conditions, though perhaps not the spirit. Most importantly it satisfied the bank, and all three accounts received that headline interest rate. These days banks have got a little wiser to this and have started including the 'set up n direct debits' condition, which makes this a more time-consuming system to arrange - you must assign your various bills across your accounts - but I believe that the overall plan still works. They don't care where the money comes from, or whether it stays - just that it comes in. Enough people get it wrong that they don't have to worry about the few who get it perfectly right (see also: how 0% balance transfer offers can be profitable...) "As far as I can recall, savings and chequing accounts exist due to regulations on the banking industry that put were into effect after the depression to prevent a ""run"" on the bank.   A chequing account is a ""demand"" account, meaning you can go and demand your money, and they have to pay immediately, by means of a withdrawal or a cheque.  Banks used to get out of hand and loan out pretty much all the money they had on deposit, and of course those people with loans just put the money they borrowed into another chequing account and the bank loaned that out to someone else.  The money that people believed they had access to multiplied indefinitely.  However, when everyone goes to take that money out at the same time, you have a run on the bank.  Therefore, government regulations stipulate a % that the bank must have on-hand.  The typical number is 5%.  That effectively limits the money multiplier to 19 times. Savings accounts get around this restriction by putting limits on how much and how quickly you can withdraw the amounts.  They pay you more interest because the money in a savings account is worth more to them, because it's not subject to those restrictions. Some chequing accounts pay interest, but you have to maintain a minimum balance.  Some savings accounts allow you to write cheques, but I assume the withdrawal limitations probably still apply. There's also something to do with deposit insurance (as in, the chequing accounts are covered by government deposit insurance, but savings accounts are not).  I'm not 100% certain of that though." I think the issue here is you're starting with a criteria that doesn't actually exist in reality.  A very small amount of research will uncover a plethora of options for savings accounts that pay far more interest than your basic checking account and don't require you to spend on the balance to earn the interest.   The point of saving is to have a pot of money that you can dip in to when you need it, or when you're ready to spend it for it's intended purpose.  That pot of money is not supposed to experience a lot of transactions.  It shouldn't be commingled with funds that come and go on a daily basis.  It doesn't make sense to have checks or a debit card attached to your savings account, because you shouldn't need access to that money that way; not to mention that those two things open the door to fraud on the money that's supposed to be there for you when you need it. Could you put your savings funds in to a checking account, sure.  If we lived in a world where savings accounts that don't force you to jump through hoops to avoid fees didn't pay 10x more interest than interest bearing checking accounts that have similar ease of administration, more people may choose to house savings funds in checking accounts; but that's not the world we live in.   Thanks to the back and forth in the comments below I'm now more certain of my position that if you want a high yielding checking account you'll have pay fees or initiate a certain number of debit card transactions, or both.  No one wants fees, and you shouldn't be spending on your savings in order to earn interest on the balance. It is very easy to juice your savings account to the best rates available. Ally Bank is a good online only account.  They reimburse any ATM Fees you may occur.  I have both checking and savings, with both Ally and ING Direct.  I don't know about having 25 total accounts - seems like overkill to me.  I do something similar though - I get direct deposit into one account, then transfer the average bill amount each pay to a different account that I never touch other than for the allotted bills.  It works well, especially for Utilities that are inflated seasonally. What do you use to mange the 25 accounts?  I use Quicken, but I don't have 25 accounts...yet. "The reason ""on-line"" savings accounts (Ally, CapitalOne, American Express, and many others) provide much higher rates than brick-and-mortar banks is because they're not brick-and-mortar. They do not need to pay for a huge amount of real estate, utilities, public-facing employees, inter-office mail, security, etc etc. All that - allows them to pay more for your money. The back office of these banks is the same as that of Chase, BOA or Wells Fargo. Its just that they don't have the enormous expense of having a branch in every neighborhood, while still reaching all the same population of depositors. So no, its not a scam, these are reputable banks. Some have physical offices (for example, I know that CapitalOne has some branches in New York), some don't (IIRC neither Ally nor American Express Federal Saving Bank have physical branches). But they're banks nonetheless, insured as required by FDIC (or NCUA, in case of credit unions), and provide all the same services for less (or all the same savings for more, if you will). IMHO, giving 0.01% APR is a scam. Not the other way around. The old-style banks want your money for free, and you're worried why would someone else treat you better... Well, that's why the US has one of the most retarded financial systems in the Western world..." Savings accounts have limitations in case a bank goes belly up and you have a higher amount in the account (more than the insured amount). Mostly big corporations or pension funds cannot rely on a bank to secure their cash but a government bond is secured (with some fine print) and hence they are willing to take negative interest rates. Can you expand on your second point about how banks are now structuring these products to account for greater defaults and losses? Is it just that the securities are being correctly rated this time around as opposed to the MBS's back in the last crisis?