Fair Bank Wealth Building Checking

bankjamie · ‎12-21-2021

Neobank SPIC insured 2-4% HYSA

Curious what people think of this account: https://bankwithfair.com/wealth-building/

There's a fee to join but it looks like they have a promo for lifetime membership if you join before the end of this year.

Anonymalous · ‎12-22-2021

It's not a bank account, it's a brokerage account where they're giving your a fixed return instead of getting a return based on the investments. These were more common a couple decades ago, before interest rates tanked. It's basically a trade off between the security of a fixed return even if the market crashes vs. losing all the potential upside as the market grows.

So the big sell is security, but part of the security equation is the stability and longevity of the company offering the products, and this appears to be a new fintech company, so I'd be a little leery. Not quite sure how the SPIC insurance would apply, because SPIC insurance does not protect you against investments going down in value, just against the brokerage itself collapsing.

iced · ‎12-22-2021

I don't get the point of this.

If you want to earn 2-4% interest, buy CDs or get a HYSA without fees. If you want to earn dividends, buy a value ETF or invest in dividend stocks in a brokerage account. Why pay for the privilege of a locked dividend rate when you can have an unlocked one for free?

bankjamie · ‎12-22-2021

It's hard to find anything above 1% let alone 4% for a 25k balance like they're offering, just wanted to get other people's thoughts on it.

It's a Savings Account but they have a Checking Account as well.

Revelate · ‎12-23-2021

@bankjamie wrote:
It's hard to find anything above 1% let alone 4% for a 25k balance like they're offering, just wanted to get other people's thoughts on it.

It's a Savings Account but they have a Checking Account as well.

It'd need to be higher than 4% to entice my interest.

I can get a guaranteed 3.125% (and change actually ~3.5% because of PMI) by just throwing money at my mortgage. Similarly I'd consider taking a free 25K and putting it in something like Fundrise over this... especially with interest rates going up.

We'll see, I mean if things go really wonky and I can get 6% or better on a Treasury or similar near guarunteed investment I'd be all over that, but I'd need a much larger liquid stake to be able to make even 4% work for me longer term from a return perspective.

That's assuming inflation goes back to 2% or lower, which I'm not sure that it will anytime soon the way things keep getting worse in the supply chain. Starting to wonder if that's going to last most of this decade even... my own giant employer is raising prices, again: we can't be alone in that.