Depending on the bank you choose, you may not run into any balance requirements for your savings account.
When it comes to everyday or monthly balance requirements, typical amounts vary a lot. Local banks and credit unions may only require a minimum monthly balance of $5 to keep the account open. But with high-yielding options, you may run into balance tiers, which means your rate could depend on your balance.
With traditional savings accounts, you may only need $1 to $5 in the account at any given time to keep it open. It’s common for traditional savings accounts to require an opening deposit, usually between $5 and $100.
For the most part, any balance requirements with a traditional savings account exist to waive monthly fees, not to maintain the account itself.
Examples of traditional savings accounts and balance requirements:
Most online savings accounts don’t have a minimum balance or opening deposit requirement. To earn interest, many offer interest on balances starting at $0.01.
However, while online accounts often skip the monthly fee and opening deposit requirements, some only offer their highest rates if you set up direct deposit or meet certain activity requirements.
Examples of online savings accounts:
When it comes to money market accounts (MMAs), these often have balance requirements to earn interest. You’ll also likely need to meet an opening deposit requirement and maintain a certain balance to keep the account open.
Typical balance requirements vary widely. They can be as low as $100 or as high as $50,000. Some MMAs don’t have balance requirements to earn interest, but they’re not very common.
Examples of money market accounts:
SoFi Checking and Savings
Wealthfront Cash Account
Public High-Yield Cash Account
The quick answer is that banks want customers to deposit funds. Deposits are what keep banks going. They’re invested and used to fund loans to other customers, and banks are required to keep a certain amount of deposits to meet regulatory requirements.
Since deposits are so crucial to financial institutions, they offer a trade. To incentivize customers to stash their money in savings accounts and other deposit accounts, banks offer interest on deposited funds.
Savings accounts, online accounts and money market accounts can all have varying deposit requirements.
While you can typically expect traditional savings accounts to require a certain balance to waive a monthly fee, you can usually maintain any balance you want to keep the account active.
With money markets and high-yield online accounts, you can usually find accounts without monthly fees, but you may need a high balance or meet deposit requirements to get the best APY.
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