If you're one of the many people who may have dipped into their savings accounts lately just to get by, there are ways to replenish the coffers.
Mary Pilon of the Wall Street Journal says the best way to rebuild your savings fast is to invest it smartly.
"Having money sitting in a can in your closet's great cause you're not spending it but you might as well put it to work as CDs are great for that savings account, high yield savings accounts," she explained.
As the savings rates slowly climb, finding the most return for your investment is key.
"There are some websites you can use to compare interest rates," said Pilon.
"MoneyAisle.com is a reverse auction site where you put in how much money you have and how long you want to invest it although these aren't investments like an IRA of a 401K and then it will churn out the best rates for you."
Pilon says often the best rates are not with the big banks, but with credit unions or online banks.
All the institutions listed on MoneyAisle.com are FDIC insured.
Another good website for rate comparisons is BankRate.com.
"Some people do what's called CD laddering which is where you take a larger chunk of money and you break it up between several different CDs and they expire on different dates so again you're not locking up your money for five years but you could be locking it up for six months or 12 months or something like that," Pilon explained. "The thing that I like about savings accounts over CDs is not locking your money up for a certain period of time whether that's six months or twelve months because nowadays nobody knows what's going to happen in six months and an online savings account you still get a high yield interest rate but you can yank it tomorrow."
Lastly, mary says, if you have high credit card debt, pay that off first.
If you're getting hit with an 18 percent interest rate on your balance, that negates the plus side of getting a two percent return on any savings account.
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