High Yield Savings Account?

[cos]

Giving up on trying to convert my existing spare cash account to a joint account at the place where it is now - they seem completely unable to do it. So I need to find a new high yield savings account to move that money into.

Looked around on the web and found so many options! (here are some of them) Digging a little bit deeper, some more things I found out:

• Some (most?) don't support Zelle for transfers in or out.
• Interest rates vary by more than 1% between various institutions, but none of the ones I asked were able to give me their interest rate _history_ for more than a few months.
• Wealthfront, being a deposit broker rather than a bank, doesn't have a routing number for ACH apparently?
• Some have long hold times or really frustrating phone system menus.

What are your experiences with high yield savings accounts (something that pays >3% interest today)? Which bank(s) or institution(s) do or have you had such accounts with in recent years?

1. (If you have a joint account) Was it easy to open a joint account? Is it easy to set up separate login access for both of you to their web portal?
2. How has their interest rate been, compared to others, over time? Currently I see some offering 3.5% and some offering 4.5%, but maybe some of the ones offering high rates now were lower than others before.
3. What is their phone support like? Do they make it easy to find the phone number, easy to get through to a person when you call, and have weekend and evening hours?
4. Do they have Zelle?
5. Do you get a routing number and account number for ACH transfers?
6. Is it easy to link to multiple other banks/accounts and choose which ones to transfer money to or from?

I'm not planning to use this account for transactions other than periodically transferring money in, and sometimes transferring money out.

Comments

[chanaleh]

I have Ally and it's currently over 4%. I opened it in like 2012 and it was among the highest available at that time; in the last few years it had dropped down below 1%, but over the past several months they've bumped it back up in several increments. They offer Zelle, but I'm not sure if it is on savings or just checking, which I have there as well (used for my business although it's technically not a business account, just a personal account). I have never used phone support or a joint account.

[wombatbanana]

We've been using a joint account with Ally for a long time and that part was easy. It does support separate web logins. And they do support ACH.

[chanaleh]

Update: I guess it isn't over 4% currently, I just got an email that it's increasing from 3.75% to 3.85% effective tomorrow. Still better than most.

I can't find any record in my email of what the rate was in late 2012 when I opened it, but in 2014 it said 1.35%. Down to 0.6% in 2020, but as noted it's gone up a bunch this year.

[minerva42]

I have an account with Wealthfront.

1. I don't have a joint account - looks like they're working on features like separate logins. https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/360034301092
2. Wealthfront has had the best interest rate of all my cash accounts for the past year, but prior to July 2022 when they raised it to 2%, it was lower. It dropped to 2.32% in August 2019, 1.78% in Jan 2020, 0.26% in March 2020, and was at 0.10% for about a year from April 2021.
3. I haven't used their phone support
4. They don't appear to have Zelle
5. Their cash account does have a routing number and account number, which I guess is through one of their partner banks (Green Dot Bank in my case). You can set up direct deposit. This may not apply to joint accounts though: https://support.wealthfront.com/hc/en-us/articles/360044303891
6. It's been easy to link to another account with my credit union to transfer money to or from.

[nacht_musik]

I don't trust Discover, but they've had good CD/interest rates for the last year. I opened one CD with them this winter, and am looking to see what their customer experience is like before moving more money to Discover.

[dougo]

I've been using Discover Bank as a high-yield savings account for 8+ years. I haven't needed to interact with customer support, but their mobile app is easy to use and scheduling transfers (repeating or not) has worked smoothly. They do have Zelle but I think I set up ACH to my Bank of America account before Zelle existed so I haven't needed to use it. (But I use Zelle to pay my rent from the B of A checking account.)

following

[cthulhia]

my mortgage partner wants us to have extra money in the account for it, which seems to me like it should be some sort of savings account, even if negligible.