They say money doesn't grow on trees... and I do my part to make sure my cash reserve is parked in a savings acccount/money market account/money market funds with a pretty high interest rate. Over the years, that has meant moving my money from ING, to Virtual Bank, to CharterOne, to Emigrant Direct. Basically, all of these accounts are linked to my checking account and/or to each other so that I can move my money electronically and quickly. Usually, I will leave the accounts with lower interest rates active with a low balance because you never know if they raise the interest rate again.
Recently, though, I had to make the drastic decision of closing out Emigrant Direct Savings Account altogether. It has fallen behind in the interest rate (4.25% currently); but more importantly, the bank transferred funds out of my savings account without my authorization! I was flabbergasted. And my transaction was not alone... my sister also noticed an unauthorized transaction in her account. Besides the fact that the transfers were unauthorized, both my sister and my accounts were supposedly in the negative territory. I contacted Emigrant Direct immediately, and they reversed the transfer. However, they blamed the unauthorized transfer to a third party (Vanguard mutual funds in my case, and the Vanguard customer representative assured me that Vanguard never gave such instructions without my knowledge).
I'm willing to chalk up the whole mistake to some computer glitch at Emigrant Direct. However, I never noticed such anomaly with any other online savings account I've had over the years. And since money really doesn't grow on trees, I decided safeguarding my money by transferring cash to elsewhere was the best way to go. Besides which, I noticed that HSBC has the highest interest rate right now at 4.8%. Sure beats 4.25% and unauthorized debits out of my account!
