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[Speaking as a US citizen] > ... BS like "high yield savings account" there is no such thing as long as I am alive ... HYSA are in 2026 readily available. >
by cagey 1mo ago
[Speaking as a US citizen]
> ... BS like "high yield savings account" there is no such thing as long as I am alive ...
HYSA are in 2026 readily available.
> ... well "money market accounts" seem better and kind of like of HYSA, but the hell those are not really that easily available.
Likewise readily available: open a free brokerage (or "cash management") account at Fidelity.com online (it is easy and acts similar to a bank account: your paycheck can be direct deposited there, it offers a billpay service, you can use it for electronic transfers, and outgoing wire transfers are free; no minimum balance and no monthly fees), cash by default goes into their SPAXX money market account (its 0.42% ER (Expense Ratio) is higher than some, but its 3.33% yield beats most savings/credit union savings rates; EX: Ally bank is yielding 3.00% these days). If you want more of the yield to go into your pocket you can buy (with no transaction fee) a ETF like Vanguard's VBIL which invests only in short duration US Treasury bills (now yielding 3.63% w/ER 0.06%). And if you're up for slightly higher effort, you can buy T-Bills directly at Fidelity with auto reinvestment, at no extra cost.
The preceding (including HYSA) are all near-zero risk, and as a consequence, do NOT pay truly "high" yields (which I think was your real point), they just pay yields that are at the upper end of 'near-zero risk'. These are NOT where you invest for long-term gain/appreciation. For the latter, conventional wisdom says: invest in the stock market, where the risk is much higher, but the historical long-term return is too. ETF's make this easy and efficient. One candidate for "fire and forget": VTI, Vanguard's Total [US] Stock Market Index ETF (as before, with an easy to open account at Fidelity, you can trade these for almost no cost; Fidelity has many competitors, I am merely a happy customer of theirs).
- georgemcbay 1mo ago> HYSA are in 2026 readily available. The designation of "HYSA" is itself kind of a semantic shrinkflationesque slight of hand. "HYSA"s in 2026 have similar and often worse rates than a standard savings account back in, say, most of the 1990s. But, sure, compared to the average modern standard savings account (with rates of effectively nothing and well below inflation) it is higher yield than that.
- bilegeek 1mo agoGenerally the only account that keeps even with inflation is a CD, but of course that locks up your money for that duration, which would suck in an emergency.
- ozim 1mo agoWhat are the rates of your HYSA? between 2.5% and 4% that's normal savings account rate and high yield is BS.