Setting up a savings account for each goal you have at ING DIRECT is easy and it will help you really see how much you have saved toward a particular goal. If you will need your money within the next five years or so, the steps outlined in this article will help you get your savings moving.
Before Miss Soon-To-Be-Mrs. Frugal and I met, we both had ING DIRECT Orange Savings Accounts. Back then, the interest rate was about 5% , but it’s fallen quite a bit since then.
Although whatever ING DIRECT is offering will be higher than you’ll get in a bank account, as I write this it’s not a whole lot. But I still encourage people to sign up for an ING DIRECT Orange Savings Account because these accounts make it incredibly easy to set money aside for specific goals and there’s no minimum deposit required PLUS your money is FDIC insured.
Similar to other banks, ING DIRECT provides you with one login that has access to multiple accounts. To create your first account, click here to go to ING DIRECT’s account sign-up page.
Once you go to ING DIRECT’s site, you will be asked to fill out information about how your self and how you want to transfer money into the account. There is a verification process you’ll need to through so ING knows you have access to the bank account you’re transferring money from.
After everything is set up (it may take a couple of days), log into your ING DIRECT account and and find the link that says Open Another Account:
When you click on that, it will take you to a screen that asks what kind of account you want to open. You want the Orange Savings Account.
You will then be asked what ownership you want for the account (if you want it to be an individual account or a joint account). Select what you want and click Continue.
Finally, you will be asked what you want to name the account and how you want to fund it. You will need to start the account with an opening balance, so select what account you want the money to come from (it will either be your existing ING DIRECT account or it will be your other checking account). Finally, choose how much you want to put in the account and click Continue.
This will take you to a confirmation page. Review the information and click Continue.
Once you have this all set up, you can go back to your accounts page and you should see the new account.
If you would like to set up an automatic deposit into this account, simply click AUTOMATIC SAVINGS PLAN (above your listed accounts) and tell the system how much you want deposited automatically into your accounts, where the money should come from, and how frequently you want deposits made.
To get started with this excellent tool ING DIRECT provides, click here to go to their home page.
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ING Automatic Savings Plans are a great idea. Among other things, I have an account nicknamed for whatever my next trip will be and save every month; I have 6 staggered 6month CDs with one month’s expenses as emergency savings; and of course, a wedding fund!!
the falling interest rate has really hurt our feelings
but still ING has really helped us with saving for our wedding with automatic savings. We’ve saved over 6K for our wedding in August. It feels really good to be able to just pay a deposit in cash without even considering a credit card.
ahhhh
Why do you favor ING over FNBO?
I only favor ING because it’s what we’ve used for a long time. ING was one of the first online banks with a good interest rate and it was one of the first to make it simple to save in several accounts.
I don’t know if FNBO offers the same options of setting up several accounts with the same login.
I know FNBO offers a higher rate right now (1.9 vs 1.5 in ING Orange accounts), but I don’t believe in chasing interest rate differences of less than 1/2 of one percent. For example, even on a sum of $100,000, the difference between 1.9% and 1.5% is about $20 per month (after taxes are taken into account).