Do you have a savings account? No? You might want to change that. Savings accounts bring several benefits to the table that you might like to get your hands on.
Read these important facts about savings accounts. They could push you to finally sign up for one of your own.
Interest Growth
All savings accounts are interest-bearing accounts. So, there will be a set interest rate attached to the account that can help your balance grow over time.
However, the size of the interest rate will depend on the bank and the type of savings account that you have opted for. A standard savings account will have a fairly low interest rate, so you might not notice much passive growth after a year. Some standard savings accounts will have annual percentage yields (APYs) of 0.01%!
If you’re hoping for more passive growth, a high-yield savings account is an ideal choice. It has a much higher APY in comparison to a standard savings account. Its APY tends to range between 2%-5%. Online-only banks tend to offer higher interest rates with high-yield savings accounts than traditional brick-and-mortar banks. This fact could help you in your search for your ideal savings account.
Insurance
You’ve worried about what would happen if your bank failed. It’s not a completely unheard-of situation — banks have failed before. In the past year, the Silicon Valley Bank collapsed—it was considered the third-largest bank failure in U.S. history. Before that, there have been many other significant bank failures across the country.
So, you might be concerned about putting your money into a savings account. What if that bank fails? Well, the good news is that with savings accounts, your deposits should be insured. As long as your bank is FDIC-insured, your deposits (up to $250,000) are covered. In the case that your bank fails, you should receive your funds through the FDIC in the form of a payout.
Savings accounts through credit unions will offer similar protections. As long as the credit union is insured by the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund, your deposits should be covered up to $250,000.
Overdraft Protection
You don’t want your checking account to go into overdraft. Once you make this mistake, you will owe your bank money if they allow the transaction to go through. You will also be charged overdraft fees, which tend to be $35 each.
You can avoid going into overdraft by setting up an overdraft protection plan. This plan would allow you to link your checking account to a secondary bank account, which would cover a transaction that would otherwise put your checking account into the negatives. A savings account is an excellent secondary account to use for this purpose!
Emergency Funds
As you can see, savings accounts make for reliable safety nets. You can use one to pay for too-large transactions when your checking account balance is too low so that you won’t have to contend with overdraft fees, NSF fees or bank repayments of any kind. Another way that your savings account can make an effective safety net is by turning it into your emergency fund.
Without an emergency fund, you might not be able to afford any urgent expenses that fall into your lap. You might not have enough in your checking account to cover a sudden plumbing repair or appliance replacement. You might start looking for online loan companies that offer fast borrowing opportunities so that you can pay off the urgent expense as soon as possible. As long as you meet the eligibility requirements, you can submit an application for an online loan. You just might get approved!
But a personal loan shouldn’t be the first solution that you turn to in an emergency. An emergency fund should. And that emergency fund should be sitting in a well-stocked savings account.
So, do these facts make you regret not having a savings account yet? It might be time to open one up.