Stephen Brobeck Interest Quotations

We recommend that consumers shift their funds from traditional savings to CDs and from banks to credit unions. If everyone did so they would earn about $40 billion more in interest annually. That's an average of about $400 per household.

On some small accounts, the fees are so high and the interest is so low that the savings dwindle rather than accumulate.

The bottom line for consumers is potentially billions of dollars a year in additional charges, fees, and higher interest rates and lower yields on savings.

Check the terms and conditions, particularly the grace period and fee levels -- whether or not there's an annual fee -- and interest rates.

If consumers started to shift money, however, ... from an interest checking or a traditional savings account into even a bank CD or from a bank to a credit union. That would place market pressure on the banks to raise those interest checking rates and those traditional savings rates. They (banks) do not feel as if consumers are demanding higher rates.