WHY THE BEST CD RATES ARE DIFFERENT

Do you know what affects bank CD rates? Why can you get a CD rate at your bank and find out later that the best CD rates were at another bank?

First if all, the length of time you are willing to loan your money to the bank will be important in the interest rate you get. The longer the amount of time of the CD, the higher the rate (usually). The second very important thing that will influence the CD interest rates is the overall rate environment. For instance, the economy is really struggling right now and all rates are low. If you come back two or three years from now things might be different and all rates may be higher. You can do nothing about the rate environment but you can look around until you find the best CD interest rates in your area.

Not all bank CD rates are the same and you will find that the best CD rates vary from bank to bank. This can be for many reasons. Banking is a competitive business as is any other business and so one bank may be giving a slightly better rate than its competitors to try to get your business. Banks also have specials from time to time for the very same reason: to try to get new customers. That is why it is advantageous to shop around from bank to bank to find the best CD rates in your city or state. You never know what specials or promotions are being offered until you look around.

You may be able to find better CD rates at credit unions than banks. This because most credit unions are nonprofit organizations and thus they can afford to give a better rate because they are not trying to make money. It may be wise to join a credit union for this very purpose of getting good CD interest rates.

A final way to get the best CD rates is to invest as much money as you can to get the better rate. Most banks will give you a higher rate for putting more of your money in a CD and a lower rate for smaller CD's. This is another way of rewarding you if you bring them more business. So, the different banks in your area may have different deals on the amount of money you invest in a bank CD.

All these reasons add up to the fact that the best CD rates are changing all the time and may be at one bank one week and at another bank the next week. You may also find good interest rates at online banks too. If you have money to put in a CD, you need to do some work checking out all the different CD rates so that you can identify the one with the highest yield.