ING’s Electric Orange Account is Shocking

Recently when I was online checking the balance in my online ING Savings account, I was interested in an offer they presented. It is called “electric orange”: a high-interest-bearing checking account. The rate I noticed was 3% APY (annual percentage yield). The nice thing is that it bears a fairly high rate when you consider that many checking accounts don’t pay any kind of interest for being able to use your money.

ATM access is a concern though, but ING seems to have fixed this in the form of hooking their customers up with fairly accessible ATMs for many locations.

But Does It Make Sense To Plug In?

When it comes right to it, I don’t intend to jump on this bandwagon. When I have money in my checking account, it is for purchases within the next 30 days. Granted, there is a constant churn of money, but in general, I only have about 5-10 days of “reserve” funds in the checking account at a time. This is by design. Why should the bank be able to make money on my money? By the same token, why would you want to settle for an inferior 3% interest rate by keeping money in this account that you aren’t going to really use when you could stash it in a CD, an emigrant direct or ING savings account at interest rates that are 4.5% and above? It doesn’t make sense.

High Rollers:

I think that this is a great option for people who have large operating budgets month to month and want to take advantage of that fact. Personally, there is only about 5K flowing in and out of the checking account each month and an average balance of about 2500; so the interest lost at 3% is minimal. But for people who generally have high average balances, this is a great move.

Getting Started:

This offer is not open to the public, as I discovered by checking ING’s website directly. So if you are interested, I would check out ING’s online savings account first.  It is likely that you will get an offer by them while you are logged in.

Go To ING Direct.