CD Laddering at ING

I don’t log into ING to check my accounts there very often – although I have an Electric Orange checking account and multiple savings accounts set up there, I rarely use the accounts for anything other than saving. I log in a few times a month, once early in the month when I’m updating my networth and occasionally if I want to transfer money into or out of one of the accounts.

I just logged in to check my accounts, though, and realized that ING’s current rate on 12 month CDs is a little over 2%. While this isn’t a lot, I figured I can throw $500 in one of those and at least make a little more money than it makes sitting in my savings. I’m doing a study abroad in January and the balance for the trip (about $2500 – I’ve paid around $2200 already) is due next month. I also wanted to make sure I have plenty of money for emergencies or other trip-related stuff, since I’ll be out of the country, so I didn’t want to lock up too much money since my savings is quickly dwindling now that I’m back in school.

But I haven’t got to the exciting part yet! When I went to open the CD, I discovered that ING has a CD laddering page, so you can easily open multiple CDs at once, and it shows you the rates for each term right beside the boxes. I think I’m in love! I went ahead and threw $2000 into a 6-month CD at 1.55%. Current rates on their savings accounts are 1.3%, so I won’t be making a lot more off of this, but I (hopefully) shouldn’t need the money in the next six months – once the spring semester starts I’ll have more student loan money (which can be used to pay off emergency credit card expenses if I incur any on the study abroad in January). After I set up my 2 new CDs (which literally took about TWO MINUTES), I went back to my homepage and noticed that you can click on the accounts to view more information about them. When I clicked on one of the CDs, it not only listed the maturity dates (which are also conveniently listed on my homepage when I log in), but told me what the worth of the CD will be at maturity AND what the early withdraw fee will be. I can easily see that my $500 CD will pay me $510.50 on 15 October 2010, and that if I need to withdraw my money today, the amount I would receive after early-withdraw penalties are deducted will be $497.44. How cool is that?! This makes me so excited to be playing with money again! I haven’t been thinking about it a lot lately because I have so many school-related expenses and not a lot of income, but this just made me so happy to think about money again! (At least temporarily!)

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