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Low Interest Rates Make Saving Money Difficult

Posted on Friday, August 28th, 2009 | In Investing
Contributed by: Investment Education Staff (http://straightstocks.com) -

by Pete Veslick

Anyone who has money to invest is hurt by low interest rates. If you want to buy things on credit such as a car you might like the interest rates where they are now but people who have money sitting around are not happy. Right now the saying time is money does not really apply to bank cds and other investments where you make money by lending it to banks.

The people that are hurt by low interest rates are those people that like to invest in bank certificate of deposits (CDs) and other investment that are guaranteed by the government. Government bonds would also fall into that category. Seniors often have their money in this type of safe investment vehicle because they need to be guaranteed that they will not lose the money. In exchange for the low risk, they are willing to make less that they might be able to in the stock market. However, with rates so low right now, they are making practically nothing on their money.

If you are looking for the best CD interest rates, you need to look in different places than your local bank. Right now many people are trying to find the absolute best rates they can find and they will have to search on the Internet to find them. No longer can you just look in your city and expect to find the best rate. A nationwide search is necessary to find the best CD and money market rates and luckily the computer and Internet allows you to do that.

By using the Internet you will be able to identify which banks have the highest rates and you may even be able to find ones that have promotions of an extra quarter point or so. Once you identify which bank you want to buy your CD from, you will be able to electronically send your money to that bank. This is routinely done now and there is little reason to worry about the safety of your money. However, it must be noted that the highest rates you will find right now are still very low compared to rates of several years ago.

One thing to take note of is that if you have a maturing bank CD, you will rarely get the best rate they offer by just letting it automatically roll over. For some reason that the banks will never disclose, you have to physically go into a bank and request the best rate on an expiring CD that you want to roll over. You will probably have to close out your CD and then open a completely new one to accomplish this. This is a minor inconvenience but one that you have live with if you want to get the best CD rates.

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