For the past year, I’ve been using eTrade’s Complete Savings for my emergency fund and other long term liquid savings. I signed up back when they 5.25% APY for all of their savings accounts. It was pretty nice while it lasted, but thanks to the market it has tanked all the way down to 3.01% APY. A paltry .01% APY better than IngDirect’s Orange Savings Account. However there’s a couple things I absolutely love about eTrade, and those are it’s interface and it’s customer service.

eTrade has consistently maintained a high quality interface to the accounts. Things work as you’d expect, it’s very nearly transparent. They utilize flash and javascript sparingly, and are very very consistent. When I originally opened up this accounts I was planning on opening both an eTrade account and a Scottrade account. The eTrade account consistently worked properly. Within the first week of using Scottrade, I could not login three times. The decision was made, and I don’t look back.

I now have an IRA with eTrade, as well as my savings account. I’m considering moving my checking account from my local bank to eTrade as well, since they offer a 3.25% APY on their checking account… The minimum $5000 balance to avoid the fees is putting me off for now,  however.

Maybe when my minimum checking account balance is $5K I’ll think about it

—Zach

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 7:11 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.