We became first-time grandparents 1 1/2 years ago to a gorgeous little baby girl who has now become a gorgeous little toddler. One of the things we wanted to do when she was born was to open up a savings account in her name and then as grand parents we wanted to consistenly deposit money into the account for her. We thought this was a good idea but never got around to it until now.
There are hundreds of banks, credit unions and credit card companies that now offer online savings accounts to make it easier for parents and grand parents to save money for their children and grandchild and Discover Bank is just one of them. When looking for an online savings account provider…make sure you do your homework and only go with a reputable provider.
We took our time and really educated ourselves about savings accounts before we took the plunge and opened one for her. You really need to educate yourself about restrictions on savings accounts, withdrawal restrictions and deposit restrictions before you even open one. Another thing you should look at is how much interest will you make on the money you are depositing into that account. We tried to look for one that had a good interest rate so that we got a good return on our savings investment.
If you don’t know a lot about this topic you can find some great reliable information over at SavingsAccount which we found very helpful. They have a nice review section where you can read reviews about the various banks and companies that offer online savings accounts aka online bank reviews. One of the things I learned was that you need to check out whether or not the bank has a fee that you will incur if you (or in our case, our grand daughter) would withdraw the money before a certain period of time. One of the BEST benefits of going with an online bank is that they all have higher interest rates than brick and mortar offline banks, after all…you want to make the most money (in interest) with your savings investment.
We figure that since we are starting now (she is 2 1/2 years old) that hopefully we can save $10,000 or more into her savings account before she reaches the age of 18 so that she can withdraw the money and use it as a down payment towards further education. We are not picky on whether she uses the savings towards a technical school, community college or a 4 year degree university… just as long as she gets some type of additional education once she graduates from high school.
Do any of you have savings accounts set up for your children and/or grandchildren? If so, I would like to hear about it.