Saturday, May 11, 2013

Mountain America Credit Union 5-Year CD

It's sad to say, but these days finding a 5-year CD that earns even 2% is becoming difficult. Mountain America Credit Union (MACU) is one of the few credit unions or banks that currently offers a nationally available CD that earns 2.0% APY. Of course I learned about this CD from www.depositaccounts.com, which is my standard source for good CD deals. About 10 days ago I joined the credit union, opened an IRA account, and started the process of transferring money from two other IRA accounts into an MACU 5-year CD.

Thursday, March 28, 2013

2012 IRA Contributions: Not Too Late

This is a reminder that you have until April 15 to make your IRA contributions for 2012. This could result in a lower 2012 tax bill if you make a deductible  contribution to a traditional IRA (TIRA), or lower future taxes if you make a contribution to a Roth IRA (Roth). While you're at it, go ahead and make your 2013 IRA contributions if you have the money. The rest of this post summarizes your options and my thoughts on what makes the most sense.

Saturday, March 9, 2013

I Bought a Barclays 5-Year CD

I just opened an account at Barclays online bank, and bought a 5-year CD, which currently is one of the best CDs available nationally. It earns 1.85% APY with an early withdrawal penalty (EWP) of 90 days of interest. This makes it a better deal than Ally Bank's 5-year CD which currently earns about 1.6% APY with an EWP of 60 days of interest, or PenFed's 5-year CD earning 1.65% APY or their 7-year CD earning 1.75%, both with an EWP of 365 days of interest.

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Barclays 5-year CD

One of the best CDs currently available for taxable accounts (IRA accounts are not available) is the Barclays 5-year CD, with an APY of 1.85% and an early withdrawal penalty (EWP) of 90 days of interest. See Ken Tumin's blog post CD Rate Hike at Barclays at DepositAccounts.com for details.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Stocks Are Up; I'm Rebalancing

You may have heard that stocks have been hitting five-year highs lately. When you hear this in US news sources, they usually are referring to the S&P 500 or the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Of these two, the S&P 500 is more representative of the broad US stock market, but it leaves out most smaller cap stocks.  Broader indexes that represent the total US stock market are up even more over the last five years. Given this strong performance, I have come close enough to my rebalancing band for stocks vs. fixed income that I have sold some of my US stock funds.

Friday, January 18, 2013

I'm Buying More I Bonds

Sometime toward the end of this month I will buy more I bonds for my personal and trust accounts at TreasuryDirect. The current annual rate is 1.76%, so I will earn half of that, or 0.88% for the first six months (January through June). The rate for each subsequent six month period depends on inflation as measured by the CPI-U. If inflation is 0% or less for the six months ending March 31, 2013, the rate for the second six months would be 0%, so I would earn a total of 0.88% over one year (actually a little more, since I'm buying toward the end of January, but will earn interest for the full month of January). Even this worst case scenario isn't bad, since I'm earning a little less than 1% in my online savings account. More importantly, I increase my allocation to super-safe, inflation-protected investments.