Show Me the Money

I like my bank. I hate my bank. I like my bank. I hate my bank. Raise your hand if you have that same relationship with your bank.

We bank at a locally-owned bank and I feel good about that. Really, I do. I feel good that my money stays in the community and goes to work for others. We have our mortgage, checking and savings at one bank and have been treated well there for years. Lately, my happy feelings have been changing and it's all the fault of the damn Internet.

First, I read this article by Jane Bryant Quinn, the well-respected financial columnist for Newsweek. The article speaks for itself and the bottom line is this; for those of us keeping anything more than a few hundred dollars in a traditional savings account at a bricks-and-mortar bank, we're being taken to the cleaners when it comes to interest rate yields. There are much better deals to be found in the online banking world.

About a week after that article appeared, I received a well-designed (I'm in marketing, you know) direct-mail piece from ING Direct offering me $25 if I opened a savings account with them. More importantly, they were offering a 4.5 percent interest rate on that savings account. ING Direct, is an FDIC-insured online branch of ING, which is a monster financial services company. I'm savvy when it comes to personal finance and always evaluate our options before I make a move. This one, however, took very little time to decide.

All it took was a quick and downright disturbing glance at my latest savings account statement. We were currently earning .30 percent. You read that right; that’s slightly more than one quarter of one percent. Now, I don’t think it’s a stretch to say I could stash our money in our basement and the dust that would accumulate on it would probably be worth more than that after a little time.

I'm fully aware that savings accounts have traditionally yielded very little and were purposely designed that way. They're all about liquidity; I can get my money quickly and with no hassle. What you gain in flexibility and convenience, you lose in interest accumulation. I get it, really. But, this was ridiculous.

You do the math on my new rate. That’s 4.5 percent. $4.50 on $100. $45 on $1,000. $450 on $10,000 and so on. I don't want to even do the math on my old rate, it's too embarrassing. So far, I've earned more on my savings at ING Direct in two months than I would have in more than a year with my local bank.

My account is tied to my current bricks-and-mortar checking account and I can move money easily between the two. Access to the money is quick as well. Local banks, at some point, are really going to feel the heat of the online banking world, if they haven't already. ING Direct also offers checking, CDs, mortgages and home equity loans at far better rates than a lot of regular banks. I believe online banking is one of the last frontiers of the Web where people haven't yet fully become comfortable. That is changing and it will continue to put the pressure on smaller banks with too much overhead to match the rates.

To my local bank, I think I still love you. But this isn't personal, it's just business.

No Comment Necessary

Pope Says Only Catholics Can Be Saved
The Associated Press
July 12, 2007

The Vatican's announcement Tuesday that non-Catholic denominations do not provide a path to salvation outraged many international Protestant leaders. . . The 16-page document, approved by Pope Benedict XVI, stated that other Christian communities "cannot be called ‘churches' in the proper sense" because they cannot trace their bishops back to Christ's apostles — known as apostolic succession. . .

Catholic Church to Pay $660 Million Settlement in Abuse Cases
The Associated Press
July 15, 2007

Lawyers in Los Angeles say the Roman Catholic Church there has agreed to pay $660 million to some 500 victims of sexual abuse by priests between the 1940s and 1990s. The settlement is by far the largest ever reached with a Roman Catholic diocese since the clergy abuse scandal erupted in Boston in 2002. . .

90 Days to the Finish Line--Part 1

It's now 90 days until October 7 and the 8 a.m. start of the Chicago Marathon. I know this because my wife and I are training for it. Again.

Five years ago, the thought of doing a marathon was not seriously rooted in our athletic sub-conscious. We'd done some short-course triathlons. Done a 100-mile bike ride at a 16 mph average pace. Run lots of 5K races. But a marathon? Not bloody likely. I suppose we looked at it as one of those "boy, wouldn't it be cool if we could accomplish that?" types of things. However, it seemed so out of the realm of possibility that it never entered the serious discussion phase. Then, ironically, childbirth happened.

My wife had our son in December 2003 at around the same time the Rockford Area Literacy Council announced it was organizing a half-marathon to be held in May 2004. Wow, wouldn't that be a great thing to accomplish a few months after the baby? And, so, just like that, off we were, doing the half-marathon training program developed by the legendary Hal Higdon.

The 12-week training program was tough but it got us in great shape and we finished in 2:04; an incredible time, we thought, for two people who'd never really run longer than 5 miles at a time, even in the glory of our triathlon days. More importantly, it began to remove the doubt we had about completing a marathon.

I'll never forget the conversation we had about a week after the half marathon. We sat in our living room, baby boy sound asleep upstairs, looked at each other and said, "so, should we do Chicago?" We agreed that our son was at a relatively low-maintenance stage in his life, babysitters were plentiful and, hey, we were halfway there already. What the hell? Why not?

And, again, off we were on the Hal Higdon 18-week marathon training program. While the half-marathon experience was relatively uneventful, the Chicago Marathon experience was not.

Tune in shortly for tails of blisters, muscle aches and a "reversal" on the Chicago El. . .