Dad Joke
What time did the man go to the dentist?
Tooth-hurty.
Now Let's Make Your Money Smile
Go look at what your savings account is paying you. I’ll wait.
The FDIC published this Monday. The average savings account in America pays 0.38%. Checking pays 0.07%. And on the same page, the government’s own comparable Treasury yield sits at 3.63%.
Read that again, because it took me a second too. Same dollars. Same FDIC insurance. Same you.
On $10,000 that gap is about $325 a year you’re not getting. Not because you did anything wrong — because you did nothing, which is exactly what the account is designed for. Nobody sends you a statement showing the interest you didn’t earn. There’s no line item for it. That’s why it goes on for years.
So: go look. Right now, before you finish reading this. If the number starts with a zero, you’re at or under the national average, and fixing it is a twenty-minute job you do once. If you’ve got an emergency fund sitting in a big-bank savings account, this is the single highest-paid twenty minutes on your calendar this week.
I’m not telling you where to move it. I’m telling you to know the number, because most people genuinely don’t.
Since you’ll ask: here’s where mine is, and what I get out of telling you.
Three places I actually use pay a lot more than 0.38% on cash: Betterment (their Cash Reserve account is the closest thing here to a plain high-yield savings account), Robinhood, and Acorns. I’m not quoting you a rate for any of them, on purpose — those numbers move, and Robinhood’s better cash rate is tied to their paid Gold tier, so the headline you see may not be the one you get. Go look at today’s number and today’s conditions before you move a dollar.
Now the part most newsletters leave out. I have referral links for all three, and if you use mine the company may hand us both a small bonus. So: Betterment referral · Robinhood referral · Acorns referral. The plain links above go to exactly the same places — they just pay me nothing, and you nothing. That's the whole difference: the referral version has a small bonus in it for both of us, the plain one has a bonus in it for neither. Use whichever you like — genuinely, it's your call, and I'd rather you moved your money than used my link.
And places I like that pay me nothing at all, so you can see the difference: Vanguard, Schwab, and American Century — I was a happy customer there for decades. If one of those suits you better, go there instead.
And while you’re in there: stop searching for the page where you pay your bill.
This one I’d text to my mother. The FTC put out a warning this week about bill pay impersonators, and it’s so ordinary you’d never think twice.
You go to pay a bill. You search the company’s name plus “pay.” Top result looks right. It isn’t — it’s a paid ad for a middleman with no connection to your biller, who adds a fee and forwards your money whenever they get round to it.
The FTC’s fix is two lines: scroll past the ads, and type the address in yourself. Mine’s shorter — use the address printed on your actual bill. Nobody buys ads against that one.
Worth ten seconds, because a late payment isn’t just a fee — one 30-day-late mark sits on your credit report for seven years, over a bill you paid on time.
Your loan can outlive the company that made it.
The SEC charged three former executives of Tricolor Holdings yesterday over the collapse of the Texas subprime auto lender, which went bankrupt last September. They’re accused of pledging the same car loans to more than one investor and dressing up defaulted loans as current. Allegations — nothing’s been decided.
I’m not telling you this because you owned the bonds. I’m telling you because of what people assume when a lender goes under: that the loan goes with it. It doesn’t. Your loan is somebody’s asset — when the lender fails it gets sold, and a stranger now owns your payment.
If a car loan or a card of yours has ever changed hands: keep paying, get it in writing who owns it and where the money goes, and pull your credit report a month later. Handoffs are where duplicate accounts and phantom late marks are born, and you are the only person who will ever notice.
Quick hits, because they’re worth a minute and not a paragraph.
Three claim windows are open and none of them will come find you — Pierce County Library System, Dap Health, and USAA in Michigan. File anyway, but don’t let the headline number set your expectations — divide it by everyone in the class and your check is small.
And check your cupboard: Sunbeam and Newell settled over allegedly exploding Crock-Pots, and there are three class actions over Thermos food jar stoppers. Allegations, both. Sixty seconds to check what’s on your shelf.
What I published yesterday, if you want to go deeper. The site is where I take one thing apart properly: the FTC’s $2.1 million settlement with Doxo, what to do if a collector threatens you with deportation, and what Bank of America told the SEC about its money-laundering consent orders.
One more thing. If you want those longer pieces as they land, that’s the Weekday Briefing and it’s free. And if the savings thing at the top made you go look — send it to somebody. Most people have never once checked that number, and it costs them for years.
None of this is instruction. It’s input. You know your situation better than I do, and nobody gets to make these calls for you.
One last thing, and I mean it. Whether you’re digging out or already comfortable, the money stuff that actually works is unglamorous and it’s available to everybody: know your numbers, look at the thing you’ve been avoiding, make one decision, repeat next week. Nobody gets rescued. People just start.
Back tomorrow.
— Steve