Canadian High Interest Savings Bank Accounts

it'll be interesting to see if people finally wise-up to this bait and switch tactic next january when ing and others again raise their tfsa rates to try and lure in some cash. i fell for it the first year the tfsa was offered. never again.

bait and switch sucks, that's for sure, but there's nothing illegal about it. it's free-market economy 101. you just have to be smarter than the banks (which really isn't that hard… they have all sorts of whiz-kids working for them, churning out "sophisticated" financial models based on super-advanced mathematics that pretty much do absolutely nothing… it's what a goldman-sachs dude referred to reccently as "intellectual masturbation" in front of a US senate committee). follow two simple rules to maximize your profits from the online banks: (1) don't put cash into a tfsa… use the tfsa to invest in stocks, bonds, etc… and (2) open as many online accounts as you want, and put your money in the one that has the highest interest rate. just make sure the acccounts you use are cdic-insured.

"The industry needs to push all rates up to encourage saving and spending restraint since reckless borrowing trashed the financial systems in the first place."

1. The government wants to encourage spending not restrict it to get us out of our "trashed" financial system. The more people spend (less saved) the greater the ecnomic multiplier effect and more jobs created.
2. If people are really that annoyed about a drop in interest rate from 3% to 2% then buy 2 less coffees a month and put it into a savings account to make up for the differance. It comes out to about 4 dollars less a month on a $5,000 TFSA.
3. If you want a higher return the first lesson––> greater risk = greater reward. So if you want to put your money in a CDIC insured bank account then stop complaining about how the return is so low.
4. "Thats for sure I wrote to my MP just recently, but no answer yet maybe all canadians need to complain."
Polaticians have more to worry about than a company changing their rates. Would you write to your MP if a company changed their prices from $20 to $25. Afterall, ING is a company that needs to remain profitable and their rates are sibject to change. How are they different from any company that raises their price?

I hate to play devil's advocate but it seems like this post is completely one sides. Don't get me wrong, of course i'd love the interest rate to be at 3+% but that's why I invest in stocks and mutual funds where I can get a better return.

this all still remains a sick paradox. people got access to artificially low, easy to get cash and the economy was almost destroyed. The solution proposed is to keep the rates way low so the same stupid people who cant manage their own finances can borrow too much and cause the same thing to happen again. Unless a recovery is real and not funded by 2% mortgages with jacked up house prices we are just waiting for the next crash. Put rates to a point where a person who can afford to service a mortgage on a reasonable priced house and at the same time have interest to reward some savings and you will have a sustained recovery not fake. Stupid people who carry 60k on a visa card or have a half million mortgage eating up all their income need to fail and be flushed out of the system. Keep the rates this low and soon everyone will be living in million dollar priced shacks, paying thousands in property tax and paying interst only on the visa that they use to buy food…. Our system needs to dish out the short term pain to get sanity back

Very well stated.

when i opened my tfsa, the very first thing the guy from the bank talked about me
is that of "BEWARE OF THE OVERCONTRIBUTION…then explained it…"

i opened another TFSA at another bank (not a branch but different company)
still, the other bank guy told me, "beware of the overcontribution…[then explained further]" so i guess the guys at the banks tell and explained to us this thing called over contribution….

now if still, and you still OVERCONTRIBUTED, i don't know why. are you even
listening to the guy zahra?

The Bank of Canada hiked their rate by 0.25% and all the major banks scrambled to hike their prime rate, yet I don't see ING breaking their asses to raise the savings account rates at all.
And nobody says a peep about it. Typical Canada.