My HSBC Savings and the Downsides to SmartyPig

I have to admit something. I hate my SmartyPig account. It's so incredibly one dimensional. As far as I can tell, you must enter a savings goal, then you must enter an end date to reach that goal; SmartyPig divides the amount of the goal by the amount of time, and withdraws the resulting dollar-amount from your account every month. You can't simply say "withdraw $25/month from account X". If you want to withdraw $25/month, you have to back-calculate using some arbitrary goal and end date. Having trouble understanding what I'm saying? That's because it's hard to explain, and a pain in the ass to set up. You can't option to not have money automatically withdrawn, and if you reach the end of the goal (I think), you can't leave the money in the account to accrue interest--they automatically send you a card with that ballance on it. I waited around, expecting them to quickly grow up and get a better interface, but I think I'm done. SmartyPig has the highest interest rate I can find, but even at 3.9%, I've decided to go elsewhere.

I opened an HSBC online account about a year ago, but it took me forever to get it up and running. They kept sending me my temporary password in the mail, but then they didn't send my registration ID in email, as they were supposed to. After spending twenty-minutes dinking around on the phone today (I was on hold for fifteen minutes this morning before I had to give up, but I called back tonight and things went much more quickly), I was finally able to get this account up and running. I transfered $420 into this account. It would have been $520, but they need to confirm another account I'm transferring from.

This has actually been a very frustrating day, bank-wise.

The HSBC account only has a 3.0% APY, but they have a 12-month CD at 4%. I've always been intimidated by the CDs because you usually have to have $1000 or more to put in them, but guess what? I now have over $1000 in savings! As soon as I can get the SmartyPig money into the HSBC account, that is :)

And my toothbrush? I've got a $28 bid on EBay, with a day to go, baby.