Best bank for savings account?

luvalist

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can consider OCBC 360 if you meet the criteria for crediting your salary of at least S$2,000 through GIRO - 1.2% per year and you already have minimum $3K cash. the interest won't be much for now until your cash starts building up though but good for future (if OCBC terms don't change).

Otherwise any bank account with zero minimum balance will be good until your savings build up.
 

Trazora

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What's a good bank to start a savings account with roughly 2k monthly take home?

If your company allow salary to be credited to a Bank of China account, BOC Smartsaver is the best. Can easily get up to 3.55% interest.
up to 0.4% base interest+
1% salary crediting bonus+
0.6% bill payment (simplest to just pay $5 to any 3 bills via ibanking)+
1.55% for min $500 spending on BOC credit and debit card (there are ways to easily meet the $500)
 

greatgreenman

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I would say that currently, Bank of China SmartSaver is the leader of the pack.

So far the best one I've heard of is still OCBC 360. Problem for Bank of China is that they don't have as many ATMs as OCBC, which will definitely be a factor for me..
 

vince123123

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The credit card spend requirement is also present for OCBC and it is actually much much easier to satisfy BOC's requirement than OCBC.

Listen to Trazora, he's the expert, I learnt a lot from him as well. I only wish I learnt sooner.

If your company allow salary to be credited to a Bank of China account, BOC Smartsaver is the best. Can easily get up to 3.55% interest.
up to 0.4% base interest+
1% salary crediting bonus+
0.6% bill payment (simplest to just pay $5 to any 3 bills via ibanking)+
1.55% for min $500 spending on BOC credit and debit card (there are ways to easily meet the $500)

Only thing is have to use their CC though :(

I am using other CC for mileage.
 
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vince123123

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As far as ATMs is concerned, it is true that BOC has fewer ATMs than OCBC, although I have never needed to use a BOC ATM.

How I work around and mitigate this is to simply have a POSB account where the ATMs are far far more than OCBC. If I need to withdraw money, I just withdraw from my POSB. You could also transfer from BOC/OCBC into POSB and then withdraw from there.

Therefore, I am of the view that the network of ATMs isn't that significant a factor when deciding between OCBC and BOC.

So far the best one I've heard of is still OCBC 360. Problem for Bank of China is that they don't have as many ATMs as OCBC, which will definitely be a factor for me..
 
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greatgreenman

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As far as ATMs is concerned, it is true that BOC has fewer ATMs than OCBC, although I have never needed to use a BOC ATM.

How I work around and mitigate this is to simply have a POSB account where the ATMs are far far more than OCBC. If I need to withdraw money, I just withdraw from my POSB. You could also transfer from BOC/OCBC into POSB and then withdraw from there.

Therefore, I am of the view that the network of ATMs isn't that significant a factor when deciding between OCBC and BOC.

so you usually ibank transfer to your dbs/posb account from BOC?
 

luvalist

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I guess you know the best - do you already have some savings while u just started work? Is this only for savings? Like what @vince123123 said, you can open the BOC account and continue to use DBS/OCBC (if u already have one), credit salary into BOC and transfer your expenses to your dbs/ocbc for withdrawals.
 

vince123123

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Actually, I don't really use the funds in my BOC account as I like to see how much "interest" I have gained. So I just leave the $60,000 in there and whatever is there above that would be the interest. It was brought over from my account at OCBC 360 after I realised that BOC is much superior.

My POSB contains a small amount for day to day purposes that I use to withdraw if I need cash. However, you could also iBank from BOC to your DBS/POSB if that method suits your needs better.

In the end, the point I was trying to make is that the ATM network does not really make much of a difference these days. It would have been a significant factor in the old days where movement of money between accounts was much slower/more troublesome. With FAST, everything is instant now.

so you usually ibank transfer to your dbs/posb account from BOC?
 

hyperbole

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As far as ATMs is concerned, it is true that BOC has fewer ATMs than OCBC, although I have never needed to use a BOC ATM.

How I work around and mitigate this is to simply have a POSB account where the ATMs are far far more than OCBC. If I need to withdraw money, I just withdraw from my POSB. You could also transfer from BOC/OCBC into POSB and then withdraw from there.

Therefore, I am of the view that the network of ATMs isn't that significant a factor when deciding between OCBC and BOC.

you can use any atm within the atm5 network including scb, maybank, hsbc, anz, etc, without any charges. so i don't think boc has a much smaller atm network than ocbc.
 

shredded

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If your company allow salary to be credited to a Bank of China account, BOC Smartsaver is the best. Can easily get up to 3.55% interest.
up to 0.4% base interest+
1% salary crediting bonus+
0.6% bill payment (simplest to just pay $5 to any 3 bills via ibanking)+
1.55% for min $500 spending on BOC credit and debit card (there are ways to easily meet the $500)
can pay $1 singtel bill too
 

vince123123

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That could also be true. I never really explored this as I didn't have much of a need to withdraw cash from BOC.

you can use any atm within the atm5 network including scb, maybank, hsbc, anz, etc, without any charges. so i don't think boc has a much smaller atm network than ocbc.

Following your post, I took a quick look and according to this Wikipedia article, the atm5 consists of a total of 162 ATMs, whilst this OCBC page shows 150 ATMs (give and take due to manual counting). So perhaps the numbers are roughly on par. Perhaps the more impt question is whether the ATMs are near your location that you need.
 

dendii

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ATM should be the least of your worries since the idea of the account is to accumulate as much as you can until the cap and earn e interest.

I will rather set aside an expenses account for me to draw money. In fact since BOC has less ATM it discourages you from drawing out cash which is in line with accumulating as much as you can in the account.
 

Trazora

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ATM should be the least of your worries since the idea of the account is to accumulate as much as you can until the cap and earn e interest.

I will rather set aside an expenses account for me to draw money. In fact since BOC has less ATM it discourages you from drawing out cash which is in line with accumulating as much as you can in the account.

Actually now with BOC mobile banking, can easily FAST cash to another bank account and withdraw cash from the nearest ATM you have access to.
 

greythorne

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Actually, I don't really use the funds in my BOC account as I like to see how much "interest" I have gained. So I just leave the $60,000 in there and whatever is there above that would be the interest. It was brought over from my account at OCBC 360 after I realised that BOC is much superior.

My POSB contains a small amount for day to day purposes that I use to withdraw if I need cash. However, you could also iBank from BOC to your DBS/POSB if that method suits your needs better.

In the end, the point I was trying to make is that the ATM network does not really make much of a difference these days. It would have been a significant factor in the old days where movement of money between accounts was much slower/more troublesome. With FAST, everything is instant now.

If you don't use the funds in your BOC account then how do you earn the 1.55% card spend, 0.6% bill payments? If your salary gets credited into BOC then you get 1% plus the base interest of 0.4%.

I am doing something similar to you except that once fulfill the card spend, bill payments and of course salary crediting then I use my posb account for other expenses.
 

babyrobo

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cimb fast saver can get 1%, does not have to make any credit card spending, no need credit in salary too.
 
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