I found the MOST PROFITABLE Savings Accounts (It’s not Robinhood)

What's up, you guys? It's Graham here.

So, after all the popularity revolving around Robinhood's 3% checking and savings accounts, and all the excitement and hysteria revolving around that, and everybody losing their minds, and also issues with the SIPC, I felt it was worth making a video addressing some of the other high-interest checking and savings accounts out there.

These accounts are fairly competitive to Robinhood and also happen to be FDIC insured. Offering 3% on a checking or savings account is really nothing new, and many other banks out there offer very close to this, or even more than this, while actually being FDIC insured. So, you can sleep well at night knowing that your money is protected up to $250,000. You don't have to really worry about whether or not a newer company is going to be insolvent or something happens, or whatever it is. You can basically, you can sleep better at night.

So, with that said, let's get into my personal favorite high-interest savings accounts out there that are fairly competitive to Robinhood while also offering FDIC insurance.

So, we'll start off with number one. This is the bank I'd pretty much use for everything; it's my personal favorite out there, and that would be Ally Bank. Right now, as of mid-December 2018, they offer a 2% annual return on your money on their online savings account. With this, there are absolutely no strings attached. There are no crazy conditions to meet, no minimum balances, no fees, no weird debit card requirements, and best of all, there's no waiting list of over seven hundred thousand.

All you have to do is simply open up an account, put your money in, and just that's it. You enjoy that sweet, sweet 2% interest. Now, I gotta say, when I first started moving all my money over to Ally, it was a bit of a concern not to have any physical branches to go to. I was so used to going and seeing someone face to face at the bank, but I gotta say, I got used to it very quickly.

I have not actually been into a physical bank branch in probably over a year at this point. Now, the idea of actually going into a physical bank just seems so old school to me. I can't even imagine any reason why I would need to do it. It just seems inconvenient at this point because 99.999% of the stuff you would ever need to do could be done online or through their app. This is actually the same with just about every single bank out there who has like a good mobile app. You don't need to actually go in branch for pretty much anything.

But not only that, I have a feeling that Ally is going to be raising their rates a little bit more just to be more competitive with some of these other banks I'm about to mention. Now, I guess it's not going to be much. It's probably going to be raising it from my 2% to like 2.05% to like 2.15%, but still, that's better than not having that. As an honorary mention when it comes to this, I want to throw in one other account that's very similar to Ally that I have to mention, and that would be the American Express savings account.

With this, they offer the same 2% interest return exactly like Ally does. I've also been a customer of American Express since 2012, and my experience with them has been nothing short of amazing. Their accounts also have no fees, no minimums, no weird fine print, no gotchas, no nothing like that. It's just a great way to get a very good 2% return. Oh, and then I forgot to mention it's also FDIC insured.

Then I got to mention one last honorary mention, and that would be the Capital One 360 savings account. They also offer a no-fee account that gives 2% interest, but they're not quite as good as the last two just because to get that 2%, you have to keep a minimum balance of $10,000, which to some people is just going to be way too much. So that's why there's no real sense going with Capital One 360 when you can get the exact same thing with much better terms with Ally or American Express.

The second, we're going to be getting a little bit better than Ally, American Express, and Capital One 360, and that is Marcus by Goldman Sachs. Now, even though I don't have one of these accounts myself, I have received a lot of comments from people who have nothing but amazing things to say about them. Again, it's another bank with no fees, no minimums, and also, drumroll, no waitlist.

The reason that Marcus by Goldman Sachs is a little bit better than Ally, American Express, and Capital One 360 is that instead of offering a 2% return, they give you a 2.05% return. But hey, you know what? It's all free money at this point, so if you can get an extra one-twentieth of a percent for the exact same amount of work it takes to set up an Ally Bank account or American Express or Capital One 360, you may as well just take a little bit more money.

And that means on the $10,000 deposit, that extra one-twentieth of 1% equates to an extra five dollars per year. So with that extra five bucks, you can go and enjoy yourself a free Starbucks iced caramel macchiato before taxes once a year per every $10,000 you deposit. And when it comes to getting a 2.05% return, there's one other company out there that I gotta mention, if I haven't mentioned enough companies already, and that would be Synchrony Bank.

Now, from what I can tell, this is pretty much the exact same as Marcus by Goldman Sachs. I don't really see any differentiation between the two, so at this point, it really comes down to whatever company and bank you prefer more, but the terms and everything are pretty much exactly the same. So at least between the two, you have two good options to choose from if you want 2.05% interest.

So third, let's step it up a notch. Let's get a little crazy here because I found another bank that offers you 2.35% interest, and that would be PNC Bank. This is pretty much the highest return I've been able to find on a savings account with no fees, no minimums, no weird requirements, no waitlists of 700,000, and also that still has FDIC insurance. This is, for the most part, the best one I can really find.

The one really cool thing about this bank that I have to mention, that I haven't seen really any other banks doing, is that it looks as though you can fund this account up to $2,000 with a credit card. So this means that if you decide to open up the American Express Gold Card and get the 50,000 points associated with that by meeting the $2,000 minimum spend, you can literally do that by putting $2,000 in PNC Bank and just funding it with the credit card.

Now, if that sounds too good to be true, there are a few little things with this one that I do have to mention. Number one is that if you close your account within the first six months, they charge you a $25 fee. You might be thinking to yourself, "Why would I ever close my account within six months?" and $25 isn't really that much anyway. Here's what I read.

It seems like when I was doing my research on this bank, that the people who used PNC Bank for other banking services were just not that happy with them. We can take a look at some of the reviews here from people that use PNC Bank for other things besides their 2.35% savings account, and they're just, I guess, a little bit less than impressed. From what I've looked into, it appears as though if you just use them for their online savings account to get the 2.35%, you should be okay, but if you want to use them for just about everything else, it doesn't really seem that good.

If anyone here is watching this video right now and has PNC Bank and has a good experience or a bad experience, just let me know in the comments below. It's got to be a few of you guys, and if you guys give a good review, I'm gonna heart the comments so it kind of goes to the top, and other people could see that. So I definitely encourage you guys, with actually any bank here, that if you guys have had a personal experience with them, good or bad, just comment below and let me know your thoughts.

Those banks I just mentioned are pretty much the banks that are available to anyone in the United States without any weird requirements. So those banks so far are going to appeal to the widest audience possible. Now, I got to say that at the time I'm making this video, anything offering more than like a 2.35% return just seems a little bit sketchy.

As many of you guys know, I put a lot of research into making a video like this, and I wouldn't mention anything that I didn't feel personally comfortable doing myself. For example, I found a company called My Savings Direct that offers a 2.4% interest rate, but when I started doing some research about them, there are so many customer complaints saying that this was just a teaser rate and their actual interest rate was reduced after a few months.

There were also so many other banks I was researching that say they offer a 2.4% to 2.5% interest rate on their accounts, but customer complaints were nonstop that they then just reduced these rates after like a month or two. For that reason, I figured there's no sense of me mentioning any of these companies out there because it seems like none of them I was able to find had anything but just really bad reviews.

When I see that, I just don't feel comfortable even mentioning it. Also, I feel like it's just worth it to sacrifice a little bit of money. I mean, we're talking about like 1/10 of 1% here for a great company that doesn't have hundreds of customer complaints. Now, in terms of banks offering more than a 3% interest and offering more than what you can get with Robinhood, the answer is yes, this does exist, and yes, you can do this.

Now, usually for banks to offer this, they have preset requirements. For instance, it might only be up to a few thousand dollars, it might have an account minimum, you might have to use a few debit account purchases, you might have to enable direct deposit. It usually doesn't come without some sort of hurdle that you have to overcome if you want to get like a 4% interest rate or 4.5% interest rate or a 3.5% interest rate.

With that said, I figured I would mention a few of those accounts here that would either appeal to the widest amount of people possible or also just offer like really insane interest rates that might actually be worth it. For example, T-Mobile is offering a 4% return for any T-Mobile customers up to the first $3,000. Now, of course, they do have a minimum deposit requirement, but if you're cool with that and you have a T-Mobile account anyway, it might be worth it just to get the extra ten dollars a month.

Another one I got to mention is One American Bank, which is offering a 3.5% interest rate up to the first $10,000, or Consumers Credit Union is offering a 5% return up to $10,000 on their checking account. But again, all of these usually come with a bit of a catch. Usually, these banks require you to make like a minimum amount of debit card purchases every single month. They require you to do like direct deposit or meet other weird things. Most of the time, it's not really worth the hassle. For some people, it might be, but for most, I'd say probably not.

Now, other high-interest savings accounts certainly do exist without a lot of these crazy requirements, but usually, they're very regional and usually they come with smaller banks and credit unions. For example, if you're in California, enjoy 3% interest up to the first $2,000. In Massachusetts, enjoy 2.7% up to $25,000, but again, almost all of these have minimum requirements that need to be met.

Now, I wish I could take credit for finding all of these regional accounts, but I have to give a huge shoutout to a website that's helped me out tremendously with this, and that is the website, the Doctor of Credit. So, if you guys are curious, the link to that is in the description, and thank you, the Doctor of Credit, for having this amazing website that gave me so much research to do from there. I really appreciate it.

So, while Robinhood right now seems like the best option in terms of having no account minimum, no fees, no weird requirements, and basically offering like a very good 3% return, is it worth it to put your money in a relatively new startup company that does not offer SIPC insurance until they're able to maybe figure that out? My answer to that is probably not. At this point, it's probably not worth the risk, considering that you can get a 2% to 2.35% return fairly safely with FDIC insurance using one of these other online banks I mentioned.

For some other people who maybe have access to some of these regional accounts that offer 3% or higher returns and you can meet the minimums, then it doesn't even make sense for you to really use Robinhood because you can get a higher return. If you haven't fall into one of those categories, and like I mentioned, you get FDIC insurance as well.

Of course, I do have to mention that this video is not meant to be any sort of Robinhood bashing video by any means because I am a fan of Robinhood. I like Robinhood. I have an account with Robinhood, and as long as they're able to work out all these SIPC regulations or maybe they're able to get FDIC insurance, if that's the case, I'm putting my money in Robinhood.

But until then, these are just some other options for you to have at your disposal just to give you a little bit more peace of mind that even though they might not offer a 3% return, they're all extremely competitive, and really the difference of like one-twentieth of one percent or, you know, sometimes it's not really that much money we're talking about here.

Also, you got to put it in perspective here that the difference between PNC Bank and Robinhood is only 0.65%. On a $20,000 deposit, that only works out to be an extra $10.83 every single month. With Robinhood, $10 a month is basically what you end up paying or losing by not using Robinhood to get the assurance of FDIC insurance. To me, that just seems totally worth it to have the backing of a stronger bank than risk anything for any amount of money just for like an extra $10 a month per $20,000.

So, I hope this video gives you a few options to consider and think of for anyone who wants to make more than a 2% return. These are a few of the banks that I researched that look pretty good that I would personally like myself. So, with that said, you guys, thank you so much for watching. I really appreciate it. If you watched to the very end and you haven't already, smash that like button.

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