High Interest Savings Account

When I set up my emergency fund, the first thing I looked at were savings accounts. At the time, the interest rate on most savings accounts in my area were dismal at best. Wanting my money to be safe and to work for me, I kept looking around until I found ING.

When I first set up my account five years ago, the local banks and credit unions were all paying out less than 1% APY (more along the lines of .5-.8%). In contrast, ING's Orange Savings Account was at a healthy 2.5%. Since then it has surged to up to 4.8%, until a recent drop back to 3% as of 3/19/2008.

Wow.. I just looked at a few banks' savings rates... OUCH.

• Chase - 0.10% APY
• Forum Credit Union - .3% - 1.25% (under 0.45% for balances less than $25,000)
• Huntington - 1.99% - 3% (3% for balances greater than $100,000)

The great thing about ING is that there are NO minimum balances to get a return. It works by linking to your checking account and moving money around through ACH transfers. Each deposit or withdraw just takes 1 business day to complete. I can say from experience that I have never had any delays or hiccups with moving money to or from ING.

For those of you who want to be adventurous, they even offer a High Yield Checking account. It has a return of 1.75% for all balances under $50,000, with free ATM access at more than 32,000 locations. I admit, I still use a local checking account for the convenience (that and the money never stays in there long enough to DO any good). However, for those of you in a better financial position, it might be good to have a checking account that gives you a little back.

If you get a chance, give ING a serious look. I've been very happy with them for the last five years and have had a much larger return in that time than I would have elsewhere.

Our Debt Journy Begins Today

Debt is the anchor that holds down our society. It is cast out and allowed to lengthen the chain until it catches and stops us dead in the water. Today, I proclaim "Anchors away!"

I decided to start this blog as a way to keep myself in check when it comes to getting out of debt. It is good to have a plan, but if no one is keeping you accountable, then what good IS a plan anyhow?

Our story stars off a few years ago when my wife and I first got married. We were young and thought very optimistically about everything. To that regard, we got into a bad business deal I cut off after two years. In that time, we were spending money based on what MIGHT come in, rather than waiting to see what actually came in. Sure, we had a few really good months, but most of them were dismal at best.

Fast forward a few more years and a few cars, two kids, and various medical bills, we had accumulated around $50k in consumer debt. In this time, I've managed to pay off and close a couple credit cards. Despite having a horrendous debt-to-income ratio, through clever budgeting we still have been able to give to our church AND pay extra on debt to help get things paid off.

A couple years ago, I started listening to Dave Ramsey who has been a Godsend. Without sticking to his principles (which are pretty common sense stuff if you REALLY think about it), I would be in a far worse position. We have been saving up cash to buy things we want now, instead of using credit and using any surplus to pay down debt to eliminate it. According to his baby steps, we are currently on step 2 "paying off all debt using the debt snowball." For those of you not familiar with Dave, this is basically paying off all consumer debt except for your house, starting with the smallest debt and rolling that payment into the next smallest debt when it is paid off.

Things are progressing, albeit slow, but things are progressing. I've included a Paypal donation button on the site for anyhow who would like to help out :). As with the rest of our income, I will take 10% off of anything donated and give to our Church. If God decides to use you to bless me, the least I can do is give back :).

I hope to try to post money saving tricks and other things that have proven useful as I continue to dig out of debt along with updates on how we are doing. My goal (other than get out of debt) is to show others who may be struggling with debt that you CAN do it. I want to be the example people look to when they decide to stop living on credit and get control of their finances.