Accounts Everyone Our Age Should Have!

1. Everyone should have access to a major banking institution such as Bank of America, Citizens Bank, Sovereign Bank, etc. These banks provide online banking which is the most basic, yet an essential service. If you do not have online access, it is very easy to setup and may take only about 10 minutes. You can log in from anywhere and check your account, before you make that big purchase of course.

2. Online Banks - I absolutely love these 'high yield' savings accounts. Most are easy to use and are good savings mechanisms. I put high yield in quotes because since I began my ING account, the interest rate has gone from 5 % to 3%. Of course this is due to the fed constantly lowering the rates over the past year.

3. Mint.com - Mint is a newer company (free service) that tracks your accounts for you. The site allows you to link all your banks to one common platform in order to view your money more easily. They also notify you of deals that can save you money or even make you money. Weekly emails are sent out as a summary of your accounts - which is helpful. I recently received an email from Mint stating that they are now including investment accounts. Nice new service.

4. Sharebuilder - this is not a must have. Sharebuilder is for those of us who want to invest our little money. It allows you to make trades for practically nothing ($4). The only issue I have with it is that in order to take advantage of the cheap trading fees, you must adhere to their investment schedule. All trades are completed on Tuesdays. Real time trades are available for $9.95 per trade but for me that doesn't make sense.

5. Prosper - recently just signed up for this. It is a peer to peer lending site. Prosper provides two things, lenders to make great returns on their money and borrowers a platform to almost create the terms of their loan. The borrowers have the ability to set their own interest rates (dependent on credit score of course). I am trying this out with $50 to see how well this really works.

More posts to follow on each of these types of accounts.