High Yield Savings Accounts (HYSAs)
Before you do anything else to level up your finances, you need to make sure you have a solid emergency fund. This is 3-6 months worth of your minimum monthly expenses to survive (depending on your specific situation) in a savings account, so you can get to it easily when you need it. While it may be tempting to invest this money in a brokerage, cryptocurrency, or somewhere else, but a savings account is the best option because it protects your principle and ensures it is there when you need it, regardless of market conditions. The best kind of savings account you can use for this is a HYSA. These accounts generally pay you significantly more interest than any savings or checking account at your traditional bank. This means you are not losing as much to inflation on your money, or you might even be gaining ground, depending on how inflation rates and interest rates compare to each other at any given time.
If you don’t have an HYSA, go open on up right now! When you are shopping for an account to use, ensure it has a competitive interest rate (Google “best HYSA interest rates”), good customer service, is FDIC insured, and has no minimum balance. The last thing you want is to be penalized on your interest rate when you need to actually use the money in your account to cover an emergency or other event. You can also consider whether you want to go with a bank that offers a full suite of products along with their HYSA so that you can move all your financial activities to one institution. Some of the best HYSAs on the market right now include:
This is by no means an all-inclusive list, and you should do your own research, because the market changes all the time. If you do end up going with Marcus, after you get your account set up you can call their customer service number and provide my referral code (LUK-94Q-78MG) to earn an additional 0.25% APY on your balance for your first 3 months.
