Opening a High-Yield Reward Checking Account

I was happy to see DepositAccounts.com mentioned on ABC World News with Diane Sawyer today! For those who are first time visitors, welcome to DepositAccounts.com! The ABC news piece (fast-forward to the first segment just after first commercial break) mentioned high-yield reward checking accounts and how you can earn 80x more interest than from an average checking account. So it’s likely that many of the new visitors will be interested in learning about these accounts and learning where they can open one.

Update 7/19/13: Refer to this article for details of the 4% checking account.

Overview and History of High-Yield Reward Checking Accounts

First, please refer to my article, 10 Common Traits of High-Yield Reward Checking Accounts. This article provides a history and an overview of reward checking accounts. After you understand the pros and cons of these accounts, you can decide if the higher rate is worth the extra effort. It’s worth it for me. I opened my first reward checking account in 2007, and I’m still an active reward checking account user. Back in 2007 I was earning 6% on my balances of up to $25,000. Rates have fallen, but they’re still a very good deal considering this interest rate environment. Today the best reward checking account that I’m personally using has a 3.04% APY on balances up to $25,000.

So once you decide that you want a reward checking account, you can use our reward checking rate table to find the best ones. This link will take you to the table. You can also find it under the checking account menu on top of the website.

Using the Reward Checking Table

To get the most out of our rate tables, please refer to my article, Tips on Using Our Rate Tables. Before using this table, the first decision you should make is if you want to open the account online or at a local bank or credit union branch (If you’re not familiar with credit unions, please refer to this article). Most reward checking accounts are not nationally available. They are only available in the bank’s market area. So if you don’t live near the bank, you may not be eligible to open the account. There are a couple of dozen reward checking accounts that are nationally available. These can be opened online or by mail. Refer to the above tips article to see how you can select your state or select “nationally available” in the table.

The second decision you should make is how much of a balance do you plan to maintain in the reward checking account. If you think your average balance will be under $10,000, you’ll want to enter an “investment amount” in the table of $10,000. You’ll find that as the balance increases, the rates go down. In general, the larger the balance cap, the lower the reward checking rate. More details about setting the “investment amount” are provided in the above tips article.

When you find a bank or credit union with an appealing reward checking account in the table, you can quickly get more information on that institution by clicking on the plus sign that’s to the left of the name. This expands the row to provide more account and bank information. For further information, click on the institution’s name. This will take you to our hub page for that bank or credit union. This page consolidates all of our information on that institution. Refer to the tips article for more details.

Credit Unions

Many of the best reward checking accounts are at credit unions. This is especially the case for nationally available reward checking accounts. To learn how you can qualify for these credit unions, please refer to my article The Big List of Credit Unions Open to Anyone.

Questions

If you have a reward checking question or a question about the website, please leave a comment in this post, and I or one of the senior DA members will try to help answer your question. We also have a discussion forum where you can ask questions on any banking topic. I hope you will find DepositAccounts.com useful.