I’ve heard it over and over “The interest income isn’t worth the time to change accounts”. This annoys me to no end. With bank services like ING Direct and PC financial its no trouble to setup new bank accounts. Sure earning 2.7% interest isn’t exciting but it’s money for nothing. As well it’s better than earning 0.5% a year and then being charged bank fees causing reduction in your account balance. This year my fiancé and I made the following amount from our high interest bank accounts:

Joint Account – $227
Individual Accounts – $318

Total return – $545

In total I spent probably less than 10 hours managing our accounts and earned $545 dollars before taxes. That’s an hourly wage of $50/hr, which is pretty good. As time goes on I’ll spend less and less time looking at these accounts as I refine my account automation with automatic transfers. Some might say that we won’t be left with much after taxes but the key is that it’s something. If you walked by $300 dollars on the street wouldn’t you stop to pick it up? If you answer is yes than any sum of money you have should be sitting in a high interest savings account. The bank should be paying you and not the other way around.

-mfd-