I have $12k in a Chase checking account, but want to start earning interest/saving/investing/etc to make more money. What should I do?
These are the basics in order: Max your employer contributions to your 401k if available Pay off any loans Contribute to an IRA  Perhaps max out your 401k Look into other investment options (refinance your mortgage, buy stocks) Those are the typical rules, special situations may need specials actions... Lets make some assumptions. You are not close to retirement.  You have no other debts.  You have a job.  You have no big need for the money.   You should invest that.  Do not invest with a bank, they are not as competitive on fees as a brokerage account. You can get specific answers that are different from every person, (so you should dig in and research a lot more if you care (and you should).  Personally, I would suggest you open an account with one of the low cost providers. Then, with that new investment account, put your money into a target retirement account.  File your statements away and tend to it once a year.  (Make sure it is there, that you can access it, that nothing alarming is going on).  You certainly have enough to start an investment account.  If you want to get more into it, ask a phone adviser what you should open. Finally, before you start investing, make sure you follow the advice of radix07 and have no debt, saving the most you can for retirement. A rule of thumb is your money will double every 72 months. Congratulations, you are a saver.  Investing isn't for you as the risk of investing is in conflict with your desire to preserver you money. Open a savings account or high interest checking account with a credit union, online only or local community bank.  Shop around no the web for the highest interest.  Don't get your hopes up though, the highest rate you see (that doesn't have strings attached) won't be much here late summer of 2012. "Aside from employer 401(k) matches (which may double your money immediately), paying off debts is almost always the best place to start. Paying off a debt early is a zero-risk operation and will earn you N% (where N is your interest rate). Is that a good deal for a zero-risk return? The closest equivalent today (Aug 24, 2012) is that you can earn about 2.68% on 10-year Treasury bonds. Unless you have a really, really good interest rate (or the interest is tax-deductible), paying off your loan will offer an excellent risk-adjusted return, so you should do that. The ""really good"" interest rate is typically a mortgage or student loans. (Mortgage interest is also tax-deductible, at least for now.) In those cases, you're not going to gain nearly as much by paying the loan early, and the loan is large - larger than the amount you want to have in risk-free investments. You want to invest for returns, as well! So you can save for retirement instead (in a 401(k) or similar account) and take on a little risk." First thing's first: migrate your savings to an interest-bearing savings account (such as from Ally Bank). While it still lags behind inflation, 0.84% is still better than 0.00%. Short-term CDs are also an option. I've personally thought about experimenting with peer-to-peer lending, but a few thousand in savings isn't all that much in the grand scheme of things, and you don't want it tied up in a risky, speculative loan when you might need it the most. As the others have said, the general savings rules apply too: pay off high-interest debt, divert more money into your 401k (especially if you aren't hitting the match yet), then work on either whittling down other debts or saving more for a big purchase in the future. Alright so you have $12,000 and you want to know what to do with it. The main thing here is, you're new to investments. I suggest you don't do anything quick and start learning about the different kinds of investment options that can be available to you with returns you might appreciate.  The most important questions to ask yourself is what are your life goals? What kind of financial freedom do you want, and how important is this $12,000 dollars to you in achieving your life goals.  My best advice to you and to anyone else who is looking for a place to put their money in big or small amounts when they have earned this money not from an investment but hard work is to find a talented and professional financial advisor. You need to be educated on the options you have, and keep them in lines of what risks you are willing to take and how important that principal investment is to you. Investing your money is not easy at all, and novices tend to lose their money a lot. The same way you would ask a lawyer for law advice, its best to consult a financial planner for advice, or so they can invest that money for you. I had some extra money, so I opened American express saving account. At the time which was offering .80%, now .90%. I put most of the money in the saving account. The remainder of my money in a investment account at my local bank. I was in touch once a week with investment, I learned allot how the stock market worked and tax deferment(401k, IRA, IRA Roth). My suggestion is to do test run and see if you like it. Side note, NOT ALL investment are created equal.
I'm going to make an educated guess on #1. Money markets invest in bonds with a very short time to maturity. An MMA at a bank will be invested in government bonds. Yields on these bonds are really low right now. Thus the yield on that MMA is going to be pretty low. When you make a deposit in a savings account, the bank uses some of that money to lend back out to its customers in the form of car loans, mortgages, etc. These rates are higher, so the bank is willing to pay you a bit more than the yield MMA so they can use your money for these loans. For #2, your time window is short, so there aren't really a lot of options for you. Keeping your money where it is will actually cost you money in fees. You can do as I suggested in my comment above: close the current savings account that's hitting you with fees and open a (free) high yield savings account. You might get 1.1%. If you average $60k in the account over the next 6 months you'll earn $200-250 after taxes. You didn't ask about CDs, but lately shorter term CDs are paying less than savings accounts. Going out to a year will get you just above the rate on a high yield savings account; two years just a little more. These are outside your goal window, so they aren't an option for you. Only having 1200 dollars sounds extremely dangerous and in my opinion is not a sound situation to intentionally put yourself into.   You have what, 11k total? That is roughly a rainy day fund, depending on your expenses and clarity of cash flow. I think you should keep that money in the bank as your new baseline. At least 10k of it. Don't touch that money unless you need to pay for an unexpected expense.  Now, you have $0 to work with, but a safe-ish cushion.   Then, and only then, should any extra money be used for either paying down the loan or tax advantaged accounts. A retirement account is probably the right long term financial choice. However, if it were me and I were (back) in that kind of situation, I would pay off the loan first, primarily for personal satisfaction, then start maxing retirement contributions. Investing in mutual funds, ETF, etc. won't build a large pool of money. Be an active investor if your nature aligns. For e.g. Invest in buying out a commercial space (on bank finance) like a office space and then rent it out. That would give you better return than a savings account. In few years time, you may be able to pay back your financing and then the total return is your net return. Look for options like this for a multiple growth in your worth. I found some UK personal accounts offer up to 3% interest (no names here, but it is well known bank with red logo). You can take out directors loan from your company, put the cash into that personal account and earn interest. Just don't forget to return this loan before end of financial year, so this interest does not become your dividends. Currently my online savings account pays an interest rate of 1.25%.  With 100K, I can earn about $104 per month in that account.  No risk, no timing, no fuss. So in theory you can make money by small changes in the valuations of stock.  However there are often better, risk free options for your money; or, there are much better options for returns with much less risk, but more than that of a bank account. "Probably not what you want to hear, but: Open a savings account. Deposit a pre-determined amount every month. Write down what you are saving for in specific detail. Emergencies are injury, sickness, auto breakdowns, bail money, eviction, nasty stuff like that. If you are saving up for something fun, trip to Europe, car, etc. write that down. Do not take from the account for any other purpose. Avoid taking it out even in lesser emergencies if you can do so without incurring debt. Don't daydream about what you could do with it. It is not for that. It's purpose should be singular. Keep an extra, smaller amount for frivolous stuff in your main checking or a different savings. Use that for impulse buys, and if the impusle can't be afforded by that amount, train yourself to know ""can't"". I can't buy that, it's not in the budget. Not I shouldn't. I can't. Good luck!" "First off, monozok is right, at the end of the day, you should not accept what anyone says to do without your money - take their suggestions as directions to research and decide for yourself.  I also do not think what you have is too little to invest, but that depends on how liquid you need to be.  Often in order to make a small amount of money grow via investments, you have to be willing to take all the investment profits from that principle and reinvest it.  Thus, can you see how your investment ability is governed by the time you plan to spend without that money?  They mantra that I have heard from many people is that the longer you are able to wait, the more 'risk' you can take.  As someone who is about the same age as you (I'm 24) I can't exactly say yet that what I have done is sure fire for the long term, but I suggest you adopt a few principles: 1) Go read ""A Random Walk Down Wall Street"" by Burton G. Malkiel.  A key point for you might be that you can do better than most of these professional investors for hire simply by putting  more money in a well selected index fund.  For example, Vanguard is a nice online service to buy indexes through, but they may require a minimum.  2) Since you are young, if you go into any firm, bank, or ""financial planner,"" they will just think you are naive and try to get you to buy whatever is best for them (one of their mutual funds, money market accounts, annuities, some flashy cd).   Don't.  You can do better on your own and while it might be tempting because these options look more secure or well managed, most of the time you will barely make above inflation, and you will not have learned very much. 3) One exciting thin you should start learning now is about algorithmic trading because it is cool and super efficient. quantopian.com is a good platform for this.  It is a fun community and it is also free. 4) One of the best ways I have found to watch the stock market is actually through a stock game app on my phone that has realtime stock price feed.  Seeking Alpha has a good mobile app interface and it also connects you to news that has to do with the companies you are interested in." Correct. By putting expenses on to a credit card which does not charge interest during the grace period, and paying that balance every month, in effect you earn interest on money you've already spent. However, first, savings account interest is something like .05% right now depending on your bank. Yeah it's money, but seriously, that's 4 cents per month on $1000.  Second, two things can make this very wrong. If you carry a balance, you'll pay much more in interest than you'd get from practically any investment you could make with the cash in the meantime. Second, a debit card can be used to get cash you already have from an ATM (not everyone takes credit, you know), and it'll cost you little or nothing. Use a credit card for the same purpose and you're paying 40% from the second the money comes out of the machine. Also correct. Rewards cards earn you more the more they're used. That's because the card issuer makes money based on usage; they get 3% of each transaction. They're happy to turn 1% of that, up to a limit or subject to a spending floor, back around to you. Again, check the terms and conditions. Most cards have a limit on total rewards. Many of them also have fees, either while you hold the card or when you try to redeem the rewards. Look for a card with high limits or no limits on rewards from spending, and with no annual fee or reward redemption fee. In addition to the above, you build good credit history with good spending patterns. However, your credit score can fluctuate wildly, because on one day you have very low leverage (percent of credit limit used), and on the next you've bought $200 in groceries and so your leverage went up 20% on a card with a $1000 limit. Leverage under 10% is good, leverage under 40% is OK and leverage over that starts looking bad. With a $1000 limit, with you maxing it out and then paying it off, your credit score can fluctuate by 30 points on any given day. "From the bank's perspective, they are offering a service and within their rights to charge appropriately for that service. Depending on the size of their operation, they may have considerable overhead costs that they need to recoup one way or another to continue operating (profitably, they hope). Traditionally, banks would encourage you to save with them by offering interest growth on your deposits. Meanwhile they would invest your (and all of their customer's) funds in securities or loans to other patrons that they anticipate will generate income for them at a faster rate than the interest they pay back to you. These days however, this overly simplified model is relatively insignificant in consumer banking. Instead, they've found they can make a lot more profit by simply charging fees for the handling of your funds, and when they want to loan money to consumers they just borrow from a central bank. What this means is that the size of your balance (unless abnormally huge) is of little interest to a branch manager - it doesn't generate revenue for them much faster than a tiny balance with the same number of transactions would. To put it simply, they can live without you, and your threatening to leave, even if you follow through, is barely going to do anything to their bottom line. They will let you. If you DO have an abnormally huge balance, and it's all in a simple checking or savings account, then it might make them pause for thought. But if that's true then frankly you're doing banking wrong and should move those funds somewhere where they can work harder for you in terms of growth. They might even suggest so themselves and direct you to one of their own ""personal wealth managers""." I think the issue here is you're starting with a criteria that doesn't actually exist in reality.  A very small amount of research will uncover a plethora of options for savings accounts that pay far more interest than your basic checking account and don't require you to spend on the balance to earn the interest.   The point of saving is to have a pot of money that you can dip in to when you need it, or when you're ready to spend it for it's intended purpose.  That pot of money is not supposed to experience a lot of transactions.  It shouldn't be commingled with funds that come and go on a daily basis.  It doesn't make sense to have checks or a debit card attached to your savings account, because you shouldn't need access to that money that way; not to mention that those two things open the door to fraud on the money that's supposed to be there for you when you need it. Could you put your savings funds in to a checking account, sure.  If we lived in a world where savings accounts that don't force you to jump through hoops to avoid fees didn't pay 10x more interest than interest bearing checking accounts that have similar ease of administration, more people may choose to house savings funds in checking accounts; but that's not the world we live in.   Thanks to the back and forth in the comments below I'm now more certain of my position that if you want a high yielding checking account you'll have pay fees or initiate a certain number of debit card transactions, or both.  No one wants fees, and you shouldn't be spending on your savings in order to earn interest on the balance. It is very easy to juice your savings account to the best rates available. "A checking account almost never earns any significant interest. A checking accounts often does not have any limits in terms of how many times you can draw funds from it. A checking account often comes with a debit card allowing you to pay online, draw cash from an ATM machine etc. A savings accounts has much higher yields, so you should be getting a decent interest. Unfortunately in the current climate this is not always true (especially not with the big banks) so you may want to look into a high-yield savings account. A savings account is often limited in terms of number of transactions, meaning you can't constantly draw funds from it, it must be stable. A savings account often does not come with a debit card. No, a savings account should not be used for regular transactions. It's an account to park your money for a medium/long time. Understand that banks loan out the money in your savings account to third-parties, so if it would constantly fluctuate, they can't have this money available to others. In return of you parking your money with your bank, you should get a nice return (interest). Yes, but it's not common. Assuming you are from USA, passing banking data (account number and routing number) to third-parties is not safe. In Europe it's totally safe to share your account number to accept money. Depends, some banks do charge fees, some don't. Often there are fees when you're not using the account (no transactions), or when you don't have a certain minimum in an account. Assuming you are American (please specify this information clearly in future) I would look into an ""internet bank"", like Ally. They don't have many fees and they have an excellent high-yield savings account. They also give you a debit card. Disadvantage is that they don't have physical branches." In the short-term, a savings account with an online bank can net you ~1% interest, while many banks/credit unions with local branches are 0.05%. Most of the online savings accounts allow 6 withdrawals per month (they'll let you do more, but charge a fee), if you pair it with a checking account, you can transfer your expected monthly need in one or two planned transfers to your checking account. Any other options that may result in a higher yield will either tie up your money for a set length of time, or expose you to risk of losing money. I wouldn't recommend gambling on short-term stock gains if you need the money during the off-season. "I'll start by saying accounts that require a certain number of transactions are a horrible place to put any savings and, in fact, I'd stay away all together. However, you've asked a lot of questions here and are clearly more in-tune with this topic than most.  If I was young again and just starting to try to pile some money together, I would absolutely chase the highest interest rates by taking advantage of accounts like this.  If you have the discipline to hit the transaction counts and maintain the minimum balance AND leave your savings funds alone, do it. If for a single second you think you'll go out one Friday night and blow your emergency fund, put it somewhere else.   I used to keep really elaborate spreadsheets of my spending and savings with goals set and progress charts, etc.  I see the argument that the transaction count is not worth the gain in interest, but you've said you're not dealing with big numbers and 5% of $5,000 is about $255 after a year.  It's not a lot but it's 5x more than a ""normal"" no transaction hoops high-yield savings account; you get five years of interest each year.  So, yes, this is an amount of money you could probably generate by frequenting starbucks less, but presumably you're already doing that.  Obviously you would keep this to an upper account balance of $5,000 and put the rest in a vanilla high-yield savings; then when administering the transactions becomes too much work close the account." Anytime you borrow money at that rate, you are getting ripped off.   One way to rectify this situation is to pay the car off as soon as possible.  You can probably get a second job that makes $1000 per month.  If so you will be done in 4 months.    Do that and you will pay less than $300 in interest.  It is a small price to pay for an important lesson. While you can save some money refinancing, working and paying the loan off is, in my opinion a better option.  Even if you can get the rate down to 12%, you are still giving too much money to banks. First, if you live in/around a reasonably populated urban area, and you're in the United States, I can't see why you would choose to bank with Chase, B of A, or another large commercial bank. I think you would be much better served by banking at a reasonably large credit union. There are many differences between banks and credit unions, but in a nutshell, credit unions are owned by the members, and operate primarily to provide benefits to their members, whereas a bank is owned by the shareholders, and operates primarily to make profits for the shareholders (not to benefit the customers). The banking industry absolutely hates the credit unions, so if you've ever been nickeled-and-dimed with this fee and that charge by your bank, I have to ask why you're still banking with a company that irritates you and/or actively tries to screw you out of your money? I live in California, and I've banked at credit unions almost exclusively since I started working nearly 30 years ago. Every time I've strayed and started banking at a for-profit bank, I've regretted it. For example, a few years ago I opened a checking account at a now-defunct bank (WaMu) just for online use: eBay and so forth. It was a free checking account. When Chase bought WaMu, the account became a Chase account, and it seemed that every other statement brought new fees, new restrictions, and so forth. I finally closed it when they imposed some stupid fee for not carrying enough of a balance. I found out by logging in to their Web site and seeing a balance of zero dollars; they had imposed the fee a few statements back, and I had missed it, so they kept debiting my account until it was empty. At this point, I do about 90% of my banking at a fairly large credit union. I have a mortgage with a big bank, but that was out of my hands, as the lender/originator sold the mortgage and I had no say in the matter. My credit union has a highly functional Web site, permits me to download my account activity to Quicken, and even has mobile apps which allow me to deposit a check by taking a picture of it, or check my account activity, etc. They (my credit union) are part of a network of other credit unions, so as long as I am using a network ATM, I never pay a fee. In sum, I can't see any reason to go with a bank. Regarding checks, I write a small number of checks per year, but I recently needed to reorder them. My credit union refers members directly to Harland-Clarke, a major-league player in the check printing business. Four boxes of security checks was around $130 plus shipping, which is not small money. However, I was able to order the very same checks via Costco for less than half that amount. Costco refers members to a check printing service, which is a front/subsidiary of Harland-Clarke, and using a promo code, plus the discount given for my Costco membership, I got four boxes of security checks shipped to me for less than $54. My advice would be to look around. If you're a Costco member, use their check printing service. Wal*mart offers a similar service to anyone, as does Sam's Club, and you can search around to find other similar services. Bottom line, if you order your checks via your bank or credit union, chances are you will pay full retail. Shop around, and save a bit. I've not opened a new account at a credit union in some time, but I would not be surprised if a credit union offered a free box of checks when you open a new account with them.