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17 best CD accounts to open in March 2024 (up to 5.75 APY%)
There’s no question that the current high-rate environment is less than ideal for borrowers. After a series of rate hikes, the Federal Reserve’s benchmark rate is now paused at a 23-year high. In turn, borrowers are facing higher rates on everything from mortgages to personal loans. So, if you want to finance a car, a home or another large purchase, you’re going to pay a lot more in interest to do so.
But while today’s economic climate may be tough on borrowers, it’s great for savers. That’s because, when the Fed hiked rates to try and temper inflation, it resulted in banks and credit unions offering much higher rates on interest-bearing accounts, like high-yield savings accounts and certificates of deposit (CDs). For example, it’s not hard to find a high-yield savings account offering a rate above 5.25% today — so if you’re still keeping your money in a regular savings account, you may want to make the switch.
But CDs, in particular, are a smart bet for savers right now. Not only are these accounts offering top-notch rates to savers, but when you open one, you lock in the rate for the full CD term. So, even if rates drop in the future — which is likely to happen this year — you’ll continue to earn the same great rate until your CD matures. If you’re going to take this route, though, be sure to open the right CD account for your needs. You can start your search with the 17 best CDs outlined below.
Learn more about the CD rates you could earn today.
17 best CD accounts to open in March 2024 (up to 5.75 APY%)
If you want to open a CD account and rake in the interest earnings, here are your top options for March:
- Andrews FCU 6-month CD — 5.75% APY: There is a $1,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 90 days of interest
- Home Savings Bank 6-month — 5.50% APY: There is a $5,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; an early withdrawal penalty will be charged for accessing the funds in this account before the CD matures
- Home Loan Investment Bank 3-month CD — 5.50% APY: There is a $1,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; an early withdrawal penalty will be charged for accessing the funds before the CD matures
- BMO Alto 6-month CD — 5.50% APY: There is a $0 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 90 days of interest
- Superior Choice Credit Union 6-month CD — 5.50% APY: There is a $500 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 180 days of interest
- Genisys Credit Union 9-month CD — 5.41% APY: There is a $500 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; an early withdrawal penalty will be charged for accessing the funds in this account before the CD matures
- Bask Bank 1-year CD — 5.40% APY: There is a $1,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 90 days of interest
- Alliant Credit Union 1-year CD — 5.40% APY: There is a $1,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 90 days of interest
- Expedition Credit Union 1-year CD — 5.40% APY: There is a $2,500 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; an early withdrawal penalty will be charged for accessing the funds in this account before the CD matures
- USALLIANCE Financial 1-year CD — 5.40% APY: There is a $500 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 180 days of interest
- First Internet Bank 1-year CD — 5.36% APY: There is a $1,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 180 days of interest
- Pen Air 6-month CD — 5.36% APY: There is a $500 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 90 days of interest
- Fortera Credit Union 18-month CD — 5.35% APY: There is a $1,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; an early withdrawal penalty will be charged for accessing the funds in this account before the CD matures
- Life Credit Union 18-month CD — 5.35% APY: There is a $1,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 180 days of interest
- Climate First Bank 18-month CD — 5.34% APY: There is a $500 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 90 days of interest
- Forbright Bank 9-month CD — 5.30% APY: There is a $1,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 90 days of interest
- NASA FCU 9-month CD — 5.30% APY: There is a $10,000 minimum deposit requirement to open this account; the early withdrawal penalty is equal to 182 days of interest
Find out more about your best CD options online now.
The bottom line
You don’t have to settle for a low interest rate if you’re opening a CD this month. Thanks to today’s high-rate environment, there are lots of good options to consider — many of which offer rates that surpass 5.5%. And, there are options for everyone, whether you’re looking for a CD with a low opening deposit requirement or simply want to earn the highest rate possible. So shop around, do your homework and consider opening one of the top accounts today to make your money work for you.
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CBS News
Two journalists killed in northern Syria
A journalists’ association says two journalists working for Kurdish media outlets were killed in northern Syria while covering fighting between Turkish-backed fighters and Syrian Kurdish militia.
The Turkey-based Dicle-Firat Journalists Association said Friday that Nazim Dastan and Cihan Bilgin were killed Thursday when their vehicle was reportedly targeted by a Turkish drone on a road near the Tishrin Dam.
Tishrin Dam, located some 56 miles east of Aleppo, has been the scene of clashes between the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF, and the Turkey-backed opposition forces.
There was no immediate comment from Turkish officials.
Bianet, a news website dedicated to human rights issues, said Bilgin was a reporter for the Kurdish Hawar News Agency, while Dastan worked as a freelance journalist for the Firat News Agency, which is associated with the militant group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).
Turkey considers the SDF a terrorist organization because its main component is a group aligned to the PKK.
The group has been engaged in an armed struggle against the Turkish state since the 1980s in pursuit of its objective of securing autonomy for Kurds in the country.
CBS News
Stuffing stockings with skincare? Here’s what experts say kids should (and shouldn’t) be using.
Skin care is all the rage for teens and tweens these days. But if you’re hunting for last-minute skincare stocking stuffers, be aware that experts warn some products could cause more harm than good.
Dr. Sheilagh Maguiness, a dermatologist and president of Society for Pediatric Dermatology told CBS News earlier this year it’s important to look for age-appropriate products for young skin.
“What’s not good about caring for your skin, washing your face, wanting to establish good healthy skin care habits early? That’s great,” Maguiness said. “But what’s not great is the fact that some of the products that are being marketed to tweens and teens are not necessarily good or appropriate for their skin.”
So if you’re deciding on skincare gifts, here’s what’s safe and what’s best to skip.
Safe: Cleanser and sun protection
Using a gentle cleanser once or twice a day to wash your face is a great first step for those around age 11 or 12, Maguiness said.
“Even tweens could wash their face twice a day; as young as 8, that would be just fine,” she said.
After washing your face in the morning, Maguiness suggests applying a sunscreen with SPF 30 or greater. Then in the evening, swap that out for a gentle moisturizer.
“The only preventative product that you need in an arsenal at any age is sunscreen,” she said. “It is the No. 1 thing you can do to prevent your skin from aging and to prevent, even more importantly, the risk for skin cancer down the line.”
Skip: Harsh ingredients
Some harsh ingredients for young people to avoid include alpha and beta hydroxy acids (AHA and BHA), alcohol, highly fragranced products, and retinols and retinoids, plastic surgeon Dr. Smita Ramanadham, told CBS New York earlier this year.
“The biggest category to really avoid are those anti-aging products,” she said. “Young skin just does not need it. Young skin has collagen, elastin, it is hydrated, so we don’t need to add these extra ingredients that are really going to irritate and cause inflammation.”
Maguiness said she sees young girls come into her clinic with bags of unnecessary and potentially risky products.
“They’re actually damaging their skin barrier. They’re drying themselves out. They’re getting irritant dermatitis,” she said. “They’re using products that really just aren’t appropriate for the type of skin that they have.”
CBS News
How Trump could undo portions of Biden’s climate legacy
Donald Trump’s victory in the 2024 election set in motion a race against time by President Biden to safeguard his environmental legacy in his remaining days as president.
But his administration’s stepped-up pace of climate-related announcements will likely mean little once Trump is inaugurated and the Republican-led Congress is seated in January. Mr. Biden’s most recent climate initiatives are all but certain to be short-lived, mostly thanks to an obscure law that tends to come into play every four years.
That law, the Congressional Review Act, allows Congress to kill any regulation issued by a federal agency in the last 60 legislative days with a simple majority vote in the House and Senate and the signature of the president.
Since Election Day, the Biden administration has announced final rules that include one to dramatically curb methane emissions and another that bans all future coal mining leases on federal lands. Both rules are expected to be rolled back soon after Trump takes office.
Methane is the second most abundant greenhouse gas, after carbon dioxide, but it traps heat in the atmosphere at 28 times the rate of carbon dioxide, the Environmental Protection Agency has observed. On the upside, methane doesn’t remain in the atmosphere for as long as CO2, so cutting methane emissions can have a much quicker, more dramatic impact on lowering greenhouse gases. Human sources of methane emissions include oil and gas systems, landfills, wastewater treatment facilities and a host of other industrial processes.
On Nov. 12, the Biden administration announced a final rule that will charge oil and natural gas companies a hefty fee if they exceed methane emission limits. It’s an effort to encourage these companies to improve their processes to reduce methane leaks.
The EPA estimates that implementing the methane emissions rule would be akin to taking nearly 8 million gas-powered cars off the road for a year.
The Biden administration also recently blocked all new coal mining leases on public lands, which would affect new leases in Wyoming and Montana, the source of 40% of the nation’s coal. The Associated Press pointed to government analyses that said ending federal leasing would reduce emissions by the equivalent of 293 million tons of carbon dioxide a year, roughly on par with eliminating emissions from 63 million gas-powered cars.
Existing leases would still allow mining in the region to continue for decades. But coal has been losing ground in recent years, as the U.S. has steadily come to rely more on cheap natural gas and renewable energy sources — and less on coal.
Republican politicians in Wyoming and Montana denounced the ban, and GOP Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming said in a statement that he’s ready to work with Trump to reverse the ban and other regulations.
In Trump’s view, fears about climate change are overblown or premature. He’s called it a “hoax” in the past. He opposes clean energy and EV subsidies and has said what America needs to do is “drill, baby drill” — that is, increase traditional oil and gas production in order to bring down energy prices for Americans. This shouldn’t come as a surprise — in his first term, upon taking office, he overturned 100 environmental rules enacted by President Obama.
During his presidential campaign, Trump promised business-friendly policies that he claimed would halve energy costs in a year by approving new drilling and slashing red tape.
Some experts doubt that’ll happen.
“There is no universe in which decisions by the federal government can cause that extent of a reaction from markets,” Jonathan Elkind, senior research scholar at the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University told CBS News. “The oil markets, they are too big, they are too global, and the president of the United States does not have the capability to exert influence that is as strong as that.”
There are still, however, some Biden climate policies that are likely to be out of Trump’s reach.
Billions in clean energy investment was set aside in the 2022 climate law, the most significant climate change legislation ever signed. But the key to protecting that funding is making sure the money is spent, or allocated, before Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.
Once the grant money is spent, Trump and Republicans are highly unlikely to be able to claw it back.
“Legally, any obligated fund is safe,” said Christina DeConcini, director of government affairs at World Resources Institute. “If you listen to incoming administration officials, they are saying that they’re going to go after that. I don’t think they’re going to have a legal leg to stand on if it’s been obligated.”
The EPA says it’s learned over the years that the surest way to protect climate policy is to tie a regulation directly to legislation and funding.
In total, about $643.1 billion, or over 93% of funding available, has been obligated, according to a White House official. Billions remain to be spent under the climate law in the next fiscal year, and some Republicans may want to keep the climate spending in their districts and states.
Trying to take the grant funding back would mean “potentially taking away benefits to communities, both in terms of public health protections, but also economic benefits,” EPA senior adviser for implementation Zealan Hoover told CBS News.
And these grants are also far from the most expensive line-items in the climate law. The Energy Department announced almost $18 million for projects that bolster recycling programs, launch residential energy efficiency rebate programs and expand bike lanes and pedestrian walkways, among other projects. The Agriculture Department put $256 million toward the Rural Energy Program for America to expand use of wind, solar, geothermal and small hydropower energy.
These kinds of projects and the grants are likely to be safe through Trump’s second term.
contributed to this report.