Here’s the best 30 high yield interest bank accounts I found in July 2022.
About a month ago, many banks were still only offering interest yields of up to 0.5% across money market, savings, and checking accounts.
But since the Federal Reserve has been hiking their Fed Funds Range (now in the current range of 1.5% to 1.75%) that’s encouraged banks to give consumers better interest rates.
I’ve found high yield accounts that range from as low as 0.15% to 5% in annual percentage yield (APY).
None of this content is sponsored, what I’m sharing is just from the research I’ve gathered from various sites like Nerdwallet, Investopedia, and Bankrate.
What I like to look for in any high yield bank account is the least amount of fees and strings attached. Ideally I like to make sure there’s no minimums to open or maintain the account, no monthly fees, no overdraft fees, and free ATM access. And also it’d be nice to have an easy way to deposit cash into the account because some online banks use third party vendors that charge a lot if you want to deposit cash through their mechanisms.
One good bank example with some of the least amount of fees and not too burdensome to have an account with them is Ally Bank. Compared to 0.01% APY from brick and mortar banks, Ally gives 1.25% APY.
With the advent of mobile banking, there’s a lot less of a need to have brick and mortar banks. However, what is nice is if you can get an opening bonus with them such as with Chase’s Total Checking offering $200 (used to be $225) of an account opening bonus.
The main catch with this is if you want to avoid the monthly fees of $12, you would need to either have direct deposit of $500+ per month, or a daily $1500 balance, or a combined $5000 across linked Chase accounts. But in this one-time bonus, what’s nice is an immediate 13.33% return of $200 on say the $1500 to keep the account open without fees.
Most of the accounts I display here are online accounts and don’t give an opening bonus but have way higher yields above 1% generally.
Another important thing you should definitely confirm with any bank or credit union you open an account with, is to make sure it’s FDIC-insured or covered by the US Government’s Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. This means your money is secure up to $250,000 and this helps to avoid bank runs like we saw during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
Examples that show the FDIC prominently include Redneck Bank that’s giving 1.85% APY on balances up to $10,000 and 0.25% on balances over $10K. In addition, FDIC member T-Mobile Money (aka Customers Bank) is giving 1.5% on all balances, and they give T-Mobile wireless customers another 4% on balances up to $3,000.
So the list of 30 accounts show how some bank and credit union accounts are offering APY rates between 2% to 5% if you meet certain criteria. The average rate on this list is 1.8% and the median is 1.5%, with the most common range between 1.2% to 1.65% APY as of July 2022.
I evaluate some of the high yield offerings in reading some of the fine print and sharing my observations about the restrictiveness of some of these accounts and if I would go for them or not. The nice thing with some of the credit unions is you don’t have to be from their state of origin to join them. Make sure you understand all the fine print and requirements before you sign up to these accounts.
If you’re interested in CDs (certificates of deposit) meaning you’re lending money to a bank or credit union for a period of time, you could be getting sort of decent interest rates of between 2% for 1 year to 3% for 3-5 years. However, I think the Series I bond from the US Treasury is currently a better deal where you are locking your money up for similar periods of time and getting 9.62% interest yield. Check out this video here to learn more about Series I savings bonds (they are surprisingly decent for now!).
This current rate will be available and guaranteed through October 2022 and then it’ll change by November 2022 but with high inflation I think the near future yields on the Series I bond will continue to be above what banks are offering in CDs in the commitment levels of 1-5 years.
It feels like Christmas in July with bank interest rates finally starting to go up from their rock bottom amounts where the last time we’d seen interest rates at these levels was back in 2019 when they were around 1.5-2%, but was also when inflation was only at around 2%. So now we’re still losing 7.5-8% against the CPI Inflation of 9.1%, but it’s still better than before.
With the Fed likely to hike by another 75 bp to the range of 2.25% to 2.5% in their late July 2022 meeting, eventually bank interest rate yields will go up for consumers too. So woohoo! I’ll probably have to do an updated list by August or September at the rate the Fed’s moving!
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