We got our Christmas bonuses at work this week, and after paying off some bills I convinced my wife to invest the remainder of it. My wife is not educated in mutual funds and IRA's. She grew up in a house where they kept cash in a hiding spot.

After browsing around, I like ING Direct's simple approach to investing. They offer 4.1% savings accounts as well as some Mutual Funds and IRA's. My wife does love online banking and "one-stop" shopping. We came up with a plan to start with a small amount in an ING savings account, and once she builds the amount up she can seamlessly shuffle half of it into one of IMG's funds.

It's not that IMG has the best funds, but that they offer convenience and consistency. Does anyone else have experience with it, or opinions?

Does anyone else have experience with it, or opinions?

I don't know anything about ING's funds but I love my ING Direct savings account and CD's. Had them for about 2 years, earned more interest than I've ever earned from my bank, and have never had a fee.

Big fan here. :nod:

ING Direct is decent with a return that will beat most any local banks. They are made for online transactions. I have not had an account with them. I have used EmigrantDirect.com (savings was paying 5.05%) and EverBank.com (paying 6.0% for the first three months before dropping).

The Fed has been dropping rates which causes or rather gives reasons for banks to lower their rates. ING and EmigrantDirect both dropped their rates the following day.

The thing I love about online banking is that they are FDIC insured, so you have a very very low risk with a return that beats most money market accounts.

ING just bought a company Sharebuilder. It will be interesting to see how they integrate it.

Just my advice is to use a high yielding savings account like ING to build up an emergency fund. When you are ready for hoping into the stock market, I would recommend Tradeking.com (http://www.tradeking.com)(4.95 per trade) or Zecco.com (http://www.zecco.com)(zero commisions). I would also recommend ETFs verses mutual funds due to the expense ratios. If you use zecco, with no commisions, you will definitely come out ahead long term.

Do they have any local branches? I know in Canada they didn't. That's the only issue I see.

OTOH HSBC in Canada [and I think the US] offers a similar online account but has some local branches to. It's nice being able to walk in and get help when you need it.

I've used ING savings for about 4 years now. They've been great for me.

Last time I went into a Wachovia branch, they asked me if I wanted to open a savings account.
"What rate?"
".5%"
"Um, no thanks!" and then I actually laughed. Hope I didn't upset the poor lady.

We got our Christmas bonuses at work this week, and after paying off some bills I convinced my wife to invest the remainder of it. My wife is not educated in mutual funds and IRA's. She grew up in a house where they kept cash in a hiding spot.

After browsing around, I like ING Direct's simple approach to investing. They offer 4.1% savings accounts as well as some Mutual Funds and IRA's. My wife does love online banking and "one-stop" shopping. We came up with a plan to start with a small amount in an ING savings account, and once she builds the amount up she can seamlessly shuffle half of it into one of IMG's funds.

It's not that IMG has the best funds, but that they offer convenience and consistency. Does anyone else have experience with it, or opinions?

ING is a solid company, Myself I use E-trade for my self-directed accounts with no proprietary fund influence. I was with Brown & Brown for years but then E*TRADE bought them out. So far so good.

Sometimes savings account offers of higher interest rates have minimums that you need to maintain in order to qualify for the higher rate so look at the fine print.

I have never been a fan of cd's due to the 1099 one gets at the end of the yr and the low interest rates associated with them. People think they are great because they can be insured by the FDIC and Banks mostly issue them so they are considered "Safe" BLAH BLAH BLAH. Myself, I would rather use Tax free Municipal Bonds any day than a CD but again just a personal preference.

As far as ETF's vs.. Mutual funds I would look into the leveraging of the particular ETF should you decide to go that route.

I shop around to see what the annual custodial fee's are with holding an IRA at different places and if there are any restrictions to what I can buy in my IRA. Normally this will be outlined in the adoption agreement.

I don't care where the IRA is as long as the institution is sound. I.e. Pershing, E*TRADE, ING, TD-Ameritrade, Fidelity ect.

If you don't have an IRA currently - perhaps think about comparing a Roth IRA vs.. a Traditional IRA for possible tax advantages of withdrawals later in life.

Also, keep in mind the 10% penalty of normal withdrawals prior to age 59 1/2. There are a few exceptions to the 10%penalty and you can update yourself on this if you feel like reading Publication Code 590 of the IRS(also a great sleep aid.) I mention this incase you think you will need access to the money sometime in the near future. :cool:

http://www.redherring.com/Home/23218

Not sure I'd put E-trade in the solid group myself.

Totally agree with the previous post.

Jason, if you don't have total faith in FDIC (I have faith, but it just might limit access upon failure). ETrade is the absolute last place you should keep you monies. Their exposure to mortgage back securities is horrendous. They will be lucky to survive 2008.

FDIC will protect your monies regardless. If it doesn't, well, pretty much the entire monetary system and the government not going to be around.

Totally agree with the previous post.

Jason, if you don't have total faith in FDIC (I have faith, but it just might limit access upon failure). ETrade is the absolute last place you should keep you monies. Their exposure to mortgage back securities is horrendous. They will be lucky to survive 2008.

FDIC will protect your monies regardless. If it doesn't, well, pretty much the entire monetary system and the government not going to be around.

So will SPIC and E*TRADE & all member FINRA formerly NASD firms are required to have this. Normally they will have above the minimus required by FINRA as well.

E*TRADE also recently acquired Brown & Brown which is comprised of mostly high net worth clients as the minimum to open a B&B account was 25k. Am I worried about E*TRADE? Hardly..

Look at GM 2yrs ago! people were running scared that they would face bankruptcy, Needless to say I cleaned up on the Bonds and now GM is well on it's way to recovery!

Merril, Smith Barney, AG Edwards, ED Jones, Raymond James also have an exposure to mortgage backed securities. Does that imply they wont pull through the Sub Prime scare.

You're worried about mortgage back securities but you like ETF's which are not regulated by anyone? :confused:


I never said I don't have faith in FDIC, I think people like CD's because they see FDIC behind it. In my opnion people can do better than CD rates in an as safe investment.

All the organizations provide some risks reduction that you will get your monies back. However, in the past two weeks two very prominent bond insurers have gone belly up. Regulators just took over ACA Capital Holdings because they lost their investment grade ranking. California and several cities are now issuing bonds without insurance.

GM pays a higher premium on their bonds because of the risks. You were rewarded for the risks.

To say that ETFs are unregulated leads me to think that you don't know that much about them. ETFs are very much like normal stocks. Are stocks unregulated? ETFs are generally tied to an index. This is what gives them the advantage in terms of costs verses mutual funds. A big part of the cost structure comes from associating the ETF with the index. S&P gets a cut of the fees for those ETFs (and mutual funds) that are tied to the S&P 500. It is a lot like a license fee. ETFs give you tax advantages over mutual funds as well with respect to dividend distributions.

Anyways, I totally agree with you about CDs. There are plenty of savings accounts that have much higher interest rates than CDs...and your money is not tied up for a fixed time. FDIC gives you security....with the exception of how long it takes them to pay out should something happen to the parent company.

Those financial companies that you mentioned will probably pull through, but they are going to hurt. They better....Smith Barney has one of my bigger accounts. One of these days, FASB 157 will make those financial companies mark-to-market their level 3 assets rather than mark-to-myth. There is some pure trash out there. (Note: I am short financials via SKF ETF)

Then some of us are long most of the bigger banks. Average yield of over 6%. Mostly in the "too big to fail" group. Hell some of my banks have raised dividends the last month :lol::lol::lol:

But I'm not worried about the next six to eighteen months. I'm putting in stink bids. Selling covered call leaps deep out of the money to further reduce my cost.
Some time sooner or later and I bet it's before the end of 2008 things will look better. We're already starting to get to the point that bad news is having less effect.

Worse case come fall I'll roll the calls forward a year and collect some more . While I wait the dividends that are mostly safe keep me going.

Not risk free. But if any of my banks go belly up then we all better have lots of canned beans.

GM pays a higher premium on their bonds because of the risks. You were rewarded for the risks.

The Yield wasn't really higher on GM @ par than most of the comparable bonds in the market but more so from being priced well under par. I bought in at the low 80's and got out at 98. I could have cared less about the 9% dividend at the time.
Most folks don't realize that the Bond market is traded more frequently than equities, Hell its not even close! LOL :lol:

Am I a big fan of bonds..Well, they do have their place. By no means am I a day trader of sorts. I look for what I consider to be a good risk. To me the GM was a no brainier and I took advantage of it!!!:tucool:

I didn't advise to follow my theory on the GM as I like having no blemishes on my U-4.HAHA For the older folks in retirement seeking an income stream with a portion of their money it wasn't a bad idea at 9% in my opinion. If anyone thought GM was going to go belly up then perhaps GM might be too risky. :gl:

We both have retirement funds at work. She is a public librarian and has State PERS, and I have a 401k through American Funds.

Her job situation is one where she will be eligible for retirement at the age of 51 :drool:. She started fresh out of college at 21 and only has to put in 30 years. So I told her she needs to start investing now in mutual funds/ bonds, etc. that will provide additional income to the PERS when she does retire. I don't think we want to touch an IRA because she'll need to start touching the money at 51.

If you buy stocks through a firm that goes belly-up, what does happen? For example, if E-Trade or American Funds goes under, etc. ...:confused:

Shares are usually okay. If you are worried you could always ask for the certificates to be sent to you. Cash is the bigger problem. Some times firms that go belly up forget whose cash it is. :rolleyes:

The bigger question is do you want to deal with the hassle if the firm goes under?