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4 things to do if your CD matures in July
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Certificate of deposit accounts, or CDs, have historically been smart ways to protect and grow your savings. But much of the success of these accounts is timed to when they’re opened and the rate at which they were opened. If you opened an account in 2020 or 2021, for example, when rates were abnormally low, the return you would have earned on an account would have been negligible. However, if you opened one in recent years as inflation surged and the federal funds rate rose with it, you would have earned a substantial amount of money, regardless of the CD term you chose.
That said, CDs don’t last forever, and once the account has matured, you’ll need to make some important decisions about your next steps. For those with a pending maturity date in July, then, it’s critical to start this process now — and equally important to avoid some easy-to-make mistakes. Below, we gathered a list of four things to do if your CD matures in July.
Start by exploring today’s CD rates here to see how much more you could be earning.
4 things to do if your CD matures in July
While everyone’s financial situation is different, it’s helpful to have a few recommendations available ahead of your July CD maturity date. Here are four to consider now:
Avoid letting it roll over
Many lenders will automatically roll over the funds in your current CD into a new one following a short grace period in between the time your first account matures and the time the new one begins. This could be a mistake, however, as there’s no guarantee that the account your money rolls over into will have as high an interest rate as your original one. So don’t let it automatically roll over without speaking to your lender about the next steps for your money.
Learn more about your current CD options here.
Ask about current rates
When you do speak to your lender, ask about current rates. It’s possible — if not likely — that you can secure a higher rate now than when you first started with the account, particularly if you’re approaching the end of a long-term CD opened in early 2022 or before. So, see what current rate your lender is offering you to keep your funds with them — and don’t hesitate to shop around for online lenders who may be able to offer you more competitive rates and terms than the bank with local, physical branches.
Move it to a long-term CD
The rate climate is constantly evolving and, right now, an interest rate cut for some point in 2024 looks likely. If that does come, it will affect what lenders are willing to offer savers on their CDs. And if inflation continues to cool, it could be the first of a series of rate cuts to come, all of which can affect what you can earn if you open a CD in the future. To prevent these potential diminishing returns, then, move the funds in your current CD into a long-term CD after they mature in July. This will ensure elevated returns for years to come, regardless of what happens in the wider rate climate.
Add more money to the account
Because today’s high CD rates may be fleeting, not only should you consider moving your current funds into a long-term CD upon maturity, but you should also add more money to the account if you have some available. The more you deposit into a new account, the more interest you can earn so it makes sense to maximize these rates as much as possible. Just don’t deposit more than you can comfortably part with for the full CD term otherwise you’ll risk having to pay an early withdrawal penalty to reclaim your funds.
Get started with a new, long-term CD here now.
The bottom line
Don’t wait for your CD to mature in July to consider your next moves. Instead, be proactive and talk to your lender to avoid letting the account automatically roll over and be sure to explore current rates for an opportunity to earn even more interest. You should also consider moving the money to a long-term CD to earn an elevated rate in the face of a potentially lower rate climate and look to add more funds to fully optimize the current CD account offers while they’re still around. By making these moves now, you’ll be better positioned for CD success in August and in the months and years ahead.
An Israeli airstrike hit a mosque in central Gaza and Palestinian officials said at least 19 people were killed early Sunday. Israeli planes also lit up the skyline across the southern suburbs of Beirut, striking what the military said were Hezbollah targets.
The strike in Gaza hit a mosque where displaced people were sheltering near the main hospital in the central town of Deir al-Balah. Another four people were killed in a strike on a school sheltering displaced people near the town.
The Israeli military said both strikes targeted militants, without providing evidence.
An Associated Press journalist counted the bodies at the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital morgue. Hospital records showed that the dead from the strike on the mosque were all men, while another man was wounded.
In Beirut, the strikes reportedly targeted a building near a road leading to Lebanon’s only international airport and another formerly used by the Hezbollah-run broadcaster Al-Manar.
Hussein Malla / AP
Israel and Hezbollah have traded fire across the Lebanon border almost daily since the day after Hamas’ cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023, which killed 1,200 Israelis and took 250 others hostage. Israel declared war on the Hamas militant group in the Gaza Strip in response. As the Israel-Hamas war reaches the one-year mark, nearly 42,000 Palestinians have been killed in the territory, and just over half the dead have been women and children, according to local health officials.
Nearly 2,000 people have been killed in Lebanon in the latest conflict, most of them since Sept. 23, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry.
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With just a month to go before Election Day, Sabrina German sees herself as an essential worker for democracy. The director of voter registration in Chatham County, Ga., German has found herself in the spotlight as she works to comply with sweeping changes to state election rules in this critical battleground state.
“The first three words in the preamble, it says, ‘We, the people,’ meaning that we, as public servants, we are working for the people to make sure that they have a fair choice and a voice for the candidates that they’re choosing,” German said.
The overhaul in Georgia has many fronts, from the Republican majority on the state election board, to the Georgia legislature, which has made it possible for individuals to file a flurry of challenges to the voter rolls.
German said she had a thousand challenges to voter registrations in just one county.
Attorney Colin McRae, who chairs the non-partisan County Registration Board (on which he has served for two decades), said, “It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out the agenda behind some of the challenges,” he said. “In a recent set of names that were submitted to us, it included hundreds of college students. And it didn’t take a lot of research to figure out that all of the college students whose registrations were being challenged, all attended Savannah State University, [a] historically Black university.”
While these issues might seem local, they have a national political charge; and former President Trump has weighed in on the campaign trail, praising Republicans on Georgia’s election board. “They’re on fire,” he said. “They’re doing a great job. Three members. Three people are all pit bulls fighting for honesty, transparency and victory. They’re fighting.”
“Sunday Morning” reached out to the members of Georgia’s election board praised by Trump. They have long defended their work, and one member told us the controversy over their efforts is “manufactured to suit some other agenda.”
What’s happening in Georgia is just one example of how challenges to the vote are roiling the nation. And the question remains: Are recent changes to state election laws addressing real problems? Or, is it just politics?
David Becker, a CBS News contributor who directs the non-partisan Center for Election Innovation and Research in Washington, D.C., said, “I’ve been looking and researching the quality of our voter lists for about 25 years now, and there’s no question that, right now, our voter lists are as accurate as they’ve ever been.”
So, what is fueling suspicion of voter rolls? “We see a lot of their claims about the elections driven just by outcomes,” said Becker. “They’re not about the actual process.
“The voter lists are public. They could have challenged these things in 2023 or 2021 or 2019. They’re waiting until right before the election, which tells you that they’re not actually interested in cleaning up the lists. What they’re really trying to do is to set the stage for claims that an election was stolen after, presumably, their candidate loses.”
The 2020 election still casts a long shadow. State officials like Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s Republican Secretary of State, are bracing themselves for another contsted election.
On January 2, 2021, Raffensperger got an infamous call from then-President Trump asking if he’d “find” votes so Trump could win. “All I want to do is this: I just want to find, uh, 11,780 votes, which is one more that we have, because we won the state,” Trump said in a recorded conversation.
Raffensperger resisted pressure to not certify the 2020 election in Georgia. Asked if he would resist pressure again, he said, “I’ll do my job. I’ll follow the law, and I’ll follow the Constitution.”
Raffensperger will once again oversee and certify Georgia’s elections. Asked whether he believes any of the changes put forth by the election board are necessary, Raffensperger replied, “No. Not one.”
Raffensperger says voting is safe and secure in Georgia. Asked why the election board members keeps making changes to the rules, he said, “I think that many of them are living in the past, and they can’t accept what happened in 2020.”
Bloomsbury
Carol Anderson, an author and voting rights activist who teaches at Emory University, said, “One of the things about voter suppression is that it always looks innocuous, it always looks reasonable, except it’s not. What’s happening in Georgia with voting rights is that, you have a massive change of demography happening. So, you have a growing African-American population. You have a sizable Latino population. You have a sizable and engaged Asian-American population.
“And so, it is a power clash between a vision of a new Georgia and … the vision of the old Georgia, our old ways,” she said.
Chatham County’s Sabrina German said, because of the pressures on election workers, she thinks about leaving every day. German may be weary, but she and Colin McRae say their experience in 2020 has prepared them for whatever comes next.
McRae said he took it personally when Donald Trump asked the secretary of state to “find” 11,000 votes to put him over Joe Biden. “Of course, we took it personally; any criticism of the system is a criticism of the individuals who make up that system,” said McRae. “Again, the truth will come out. The truth will win out.”
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Story produced by Ed Forgotson. Editor: Carol Ross.
