My only firm feeling is to not get baited by a near-5% rate for only a 12 or 15 month term. A little lower rate for a much longer term will likely prove to be the correct answer.
Like the blog article scanchain posted, long term rates may have already peaked this cycle and wont touch 5% again. Waiting for it may put us in the metaphorical position of having to catch a falling knife.
With funds in Alliant Savings are you able to open the CD on your own? I’m making my transfer of funds today so money will be in Alliant tomorrow.
I’m taking your advice and hopefully opening and completing the funding of my new 48 month 4.60% CD. Of course I can always call and talk with an agent.
Thanks a bunch… seems as though Alliant is trying to improve its image.
You can open the CD once the funds are in your Alliant savings or checking account. It’s an easy process and it’s all done online, including selecting which account to take the funds from, whether you want to distribute the interest every month and which account to credit on maturity.
Remember to select a maturity date that is on a business day. 
Also apparently Alliant is running a promotion now. See the Alliant thread
You could’ve just posted a link to your post in the Alliant thread. Let’s keep any discussions there.
Signature Federal Credit Union has a 6 month CD at 5.00% APY with a $500 min/$250k max deposit, limit of one Certificate per account.
Easy membership requirement (Signature FCU will enroll you into American Consumer Council (ACC), at no cost to you, therefore making you eligible for membership).
I decided to go halves (more like 70/30), and pay the penalty to move most of my balance to NASA for one of their 49-month 4.75% APY offers.
Two things:
Turns out there was no EWP, she didnt know why but I wasnt complaining. Tried to withdraw the rest at no fee as well, but the system balked at two large withdrawals so thats still a work in progress. Its an add-on CD, so my hypothesis is the add-on amounts are being treated like interest earnings, and the EWP only applies to the opening balance.
Also turns out that, on the GTE Financial page where it promotes their 4.54% offer, if you scroll down a bit they also have 60-month Jumbo CDs at 4.8%.
Needless to say, this Rep made me happy today - no penalty, and a slightly higher rate without the hassle of transfering funds to another bank. And while I almost missed it, props to GTE for promoting a rate thats most accessible to people (with a sub-$100k requirement) instead of headlining their best rate that many wont qualify for.
Good deal! I’m glad it worked out well for you.
I am currently not a GTE member but it looks like a nice credit union to have. Its inactivity fee gave me pause though. E.g. it states an Inactive Member fee of $15 a month. Has that been an issue for you if you just have a long term CD and you don’t touch the account at all?
Honestly, I didnt know there was an inactivity fee. Being an add-on I’ve made additional deposits occasionally, so it’s never gone more than ~6 months without activity.
But I will confirm what counts as activity so that fee doesnt sneak up on me, and it’s never a problem to set up a recurring $20 deposit a couple times/year to maintain activity.
According to GTE’s disclosures,
An account from which you have not made a withdrawal, deposit, or transfer within the past 6 months may be classified inactive, and dormant after 24 months. Inactive/dormant accounts may be charged the Inactive/Dormant Member Account fee as set forth in the Schedule of Current Charges.
I’m not sure the above can be applied to non-addon CDs.
I dont know if CD interest would count as activity. But the fee generally applies to “the membership”, not each individual account. So your base savings account (which is required) or other account (if you have any) would still need to have that activity every 6 months. But it’s easy to automate - transfer $20 in every 6 months, and transfer $20 out 3 months after each deposit. I have a couple lingering memberships following old CDs maturing, where I do exactly that, just in case they have a new offer sometime.
So you’re going with GTE 60 mo 4.5%? Sounds like a good deal offered to you.
Navy did a similar offer for me. They closed 2-3 ongoing CD’s and placed all the funds together into their new high interest CD. The time frame was almost the same.
It’s 4.8% for a jumbo ($100k) CD. It isnt any special offer I received, it’s available to anyone.
As far as I can tell, that’s at or near the top for anything longer term right now.
They closed the CDs and transferred the funds before the maturity date?
My hypothesis was wrong. I was able to close the CD entirely with no penalty, despite having been told by multiple email reps that there was a fee and there was no way to waive it. I did have to speak with a manager to close it, but it was a quick and painless process.
So if you have one of those GTE 3.3% add-on CDs from 3.5 years ago, there’s a good chance you can get out of it clean. Roll it into one of GTE’s 4.8% offers, and you get nearly a 50% bump over what you would’ve received plus extend the timeframe out for a new 60 month term.
Last fall I had purchased a couple brokered CDs paying 4.35% and 4.5%. Today I was able to sell them each for a 1%+ premium (plus accrued interest), and push the money to GTE towards buying another of their 4.8% jumbo CDs.
Netted a 2.5% return over a 4-month holding period, plus moved the money to a higher long term rate. Not bad, I feel rather accomplished the past couple days.
That’s good thinking and you took advantage of the quirks of brokered CDs. When the prevailing rates of brokered CDs are lower than their initial rates (in this case their coupon rates), they gain in value. So if you can get direct CDs now with rates higher than the brokered CDs, it is a good trade to sell the brokered CDs and swap them into direct CDs.
I am curious where you purchased and sold your brokered CDs? Were you able to view any bid/ask prices before selling? I have the Discover 4.9% 5-yr brokered CD at Fidelity but there were no bid/ask prices unless I request one (which I haven’t).
TDAmeritrade. “Sell” isnt actually selling it, it is requesting a bid. Then you need to accept the bid.
Not sure how the mechanics work, but in both cases when I first accepted the bid it declared it no longer the best offer, and then offered a better price. No idea where the bids come from, but it indicates it may be prudent to wait a few minutes before accepting. For one of my CDs, the bid was increased 4 times before it let me accept.
I suspect I have the same 4.9% CD you have, plus a couple others at 4.9 - 5%. I plan to sit on them, although I probably should be capturing that premium as well. I also have a 3% Cap1 CD I bought at a discount (yielding 5%), I need to figure out the math to determine that one’s premium as well.
