Great Interest Rate

With the OCR at a record low of 3.5%, it’s a great time to invest in a new house as you can get a low mortgage rate, but those with savings investments get the short stick with lower interest rates. Investing definitely has its ups and downs.

Are investments ever absolutely safe? Cars and houses can depreciate, stocks can fall and businesses can have rocky times, so of course not. However, having savings in the bank is a pretty safe investment to have, and believe it or not, you can still get great, competitive interest rates

. While the market average interest rate is 3.55% from the big banks in New Zealand at the moment, there are online banking services which can give you an on-call interest rate of 4.50%.

How do they do this? Online banks have no branches and no tellers, meaning smaller overheads. Smaller overheads means small margins need to be made to cover costs, so instead of contributing to a bank branch’s power bill, you get a higher interest rate (meaning more interest earnings in your account). Nice to know that in these financially challenging times you can still get a high interest rate, isn’t it?