One thing that I've done recently as I continue to dig my way out of debt, is set up an etrade account online.  I think it's important to ramp up my investments as my bad debt becomes a thing of the past.  One nice thing about etrade is that they offer a Savings Accounts that earns you 5.05% interest.  They also offer bill-pay through your accounts.  So what I'm going to start doing is figure out how much I pay in bills per month, have it dirrectly transferred to my savings account at etrade on a weekly basis (Monthly bill totals divided by 4), and let it sit in the savings account until each bill comes due.  This will allow me to earn interest on the money as it sits in the account waiting to pay my bills.

Mark

That's an interesting and useful strategy.  Fortunately, my online bank is setup for direct deposit although I do not earn high interest on it (I use ING for that).  Does Etrade offer a checking account or direct deposit option so that the money would start earning interest as soon as it's deposited from your paycheck?  This way it wouldn't require a transfer.

They have a checking account that you would have to do the billpay from, so I have the money directly transferred from my bank to the Etrade savings, and then I transfer it to the checking at the appropriate time.

Electric Orange is ING's new all online checking account.  I use that to gain interest and pay bills.  I use wachovia just to transfer money to ING.  I guess the word "use" for the wachovia account is a funny pun there.

I just opened an ING Orange Account - with $5   This is going to become my emergency fund.  But I am intrigued with this idea.  Please share more . . . .

So you deposit the money you need for bills into your ING account?  How long do you keep that money in your account??

I don't know that this would work for me.  I use one paycheck a month to pay all my bills, then use the other as a debt payment on my highest interest credit card.  So I'm not really keeping much money in my account for very long.

I would appreciate your advice on this - THANKS!

If the bank your depositing your paycheck into offers free bill pay I feel that's an easy route to go although you probably do sacrifice some interest for convenience if its not a high interest online bank.

I currently use ING also and I do enjoy their saving feature where you can set up multiple accounts under one login and nickname them for various goals (emergency, short term saving, etc.)

If transferring between banks, wouldn't you lose several days in interest during each transfer?

I have no suggestion about this matter but my well-wisher suggests me a site called www.debtxfactor.com provides system for debt settlement management. I’m sure it would be beneficial.

If you are paying more interest on things you have financed are you really saving.?

I use my ING account to stash away money so I can touch i then I use it to help me pay off stuff.

debtelim wrote:

If you are paying more interest on things you have financed are you really saving.?

I wondered about that too, but I assume that the savings discussed here in many cases are set aside for emergency funds?

How often is interest paid out on these accounts?  That would be the big question for me.  If I have to tie my money up for long periods of time it wouldn't be worth it.