I recently got a few thousand from Unclaimed Property (a lot of people have money there and don't know it.) that I guess my mother left me, and I wanted to open a saving account, in a different bank so that if the bank I'm now failed, I'd still have a few thousand to live on until the agencies straighted out the first bank. (This sort of thing happened in Md. about 40 years ago, not to me, but to a bunch of people. Maybe the rules have changed but just to be sure.)
And the bank paid on savings accounts between 0.01 and 0.04% interest. Huh? When I was in high school they paid 3%, and in California you could get 5%. I know savings accounts are not the place for the highest return but 0.03%!!! (You only got 0.04 if you had more than a million deposited. What moron who has a million puts a million in a 0.04% savings account?)
That's what it said on the web but I thought I shoudl go ask. The web also said there were High Yield acounts paying 4.65% but only available "in eligble markets or at select locations". Huh? This is a regional bank with 400+ branches in 5 or 10 northeastern states. Don't they just pool all their deposits when they invest, and where could they find an investment so bad that they, after expenses, can pay only 0.03%?
But that's what they told me in person too.
My father was a local booster and always bought stock in any new business that opened up in our small home town of 50,000. But he also invested in national stocks, and he looked forward to retiring and spending his time playing the market. However he had rheumatic fever as a child in 1898 and died at 63. I was told when he died, he still had stock certificates from all the worthless local companies he had bought into. So since he couldn't do it, I was thinking I should. Even though, whenever I look into it, it seems incredibly boring. But I also wanted the account at a new bank to make it easy to keep track if I was winning or losing.