Do you remember the days when online savings accounts where giving great interest rates? I sure do. I remember loving my WaMu (which has since failed and been snatch up by Chase) online savings account with its fat 5% APY. I used to love socking my money away in its coffers, letting my cold hard cash mate with all the other cold hard cash there, making me me an incredibly rich man.

Well, those days are over. The leading rates that one can actually get today are still below 2% - and that is from major online banking players like HSBC Direct, ETrade, or ING Direct. Some are even below 1% APY!

If you have any significant amount in savings it behooves you to get out there and start making your money work for you.  There is just no excuse to keep it locked away in a checking account making your bank tons of money.

What is a brother to do when online savings accounts have fallen so far?

The firs thing that you are going to want to do is begin to shop around for an online savings provider that is going to meet your needs. This is more than finding the bank that has the highest APY - you are going to want to find a bank that will have good customer service, allow you quick access to your cash, and provide you some reasonable compensation for the privilege of keeping your money inside their coffers.

I recommend that you start with the big players, the ING Directs, the ETrades, and the HBSC Directs of the world. They can be a baseline comparison through which you compare all other online savings account offers that you come across.

This is a particular favorite among people who write personal finance blogs. They love the features that this account has to offer. Here is a list of some of the many features that people love about ING Direct:

• ING Direct was among the first to get into the online banking industry. Having pioneer status is not a sure sign that they are still great, but they do know that they are doing and have a well established reputation in the industry - both pluses for those just beginning their online banking journey.
• There APY is generally within the top 50%. This is good, but it is pretty rare when ING Direct is going to be offering the best rate on the market.
• You don't need a mountain of cash to use these services. No minimums means that you can start saving with ING with as little as $1 if that is all you have right now.
• All transfers between your ING Direct accounts and other accounts are free. You won't pay a penny of your interest income to get access to your interest income.
• Easy integration with checking accounts, even non-ING checking accounts. This is a pretty useful feature if you want to still use a brick-and-mortar bank to have your checking account at but want to earn more interest than that bank offers on their savings account.
• ING Direct is a safe bank. FDIC insurance keeps up to $250,000 of your savings (who has $250,000 in a savings account anyway?) safe from catastrophic bank failure. They also have really tight Internet security and account security.
• The have no fees. No fees means more money in your pocket.
  

E*Trade is better know for their online stock trading business than their online banking services, but their banking services are among some of the best. They offer:

• No minimum balance, $1 to open, no account fees. No fees rocks.
  
• Competitive APY interest rates. As of late the ETrade has fallen hard in terms of APY (they sit at 0.95% at this writing), but have historically been competitive with the main players in the industry. If they stay this low for long you might want to consider putting your money elsewhere though.
• ETrade has one of the BEST funds transfer systems of any online savings account I know of. From what I can tell, your money will transfer instantly even to a non-ETrade account. This means that you won't loose one penny of interest income when transferring your money from ETrade to another bank. This is really important for large sums of money (like a $1,000,000 or more), but is still nice for my $100 transfers.
• This also means that you can transfer between your ETrade brokerage account and your ETrade savings account instantly too - letting you capitalize on some movement of the market that you see happening right before you eyes.

Here are 5 really strong elements of the HSBC Direct Online Savings account:

• No monthly fees as well as no minimum balance requirement. If you haven't noticed by now, this is a very desirable trait in an online bank. If they don't charge you for having your account you will be able to keep more of your "hard earned" interest payments for yourself.
• Allows you to link to as many external account as you want. While many of use don't have 150 bank accounts, some of use can have dozens and it is nice to know that you can link them all to one central savings account.
• You can have ATM access at HSBC branches. Cold, hard cash is just a trip to the ATM away. This is really helpful when you head on out to places where cash is much better to have and credit or debit cards.
• HSBC is known for their high level of customer service. Nobody want to have piss poor customer service, so going with someone who has a proven track record is a great idea.
• Consistently high APYs. You want to actually earn some money from you savings account, right?

That's right, if each bank seems to offer pretty much the same service and you aren't sure which one you want to put your money in, what would be stopping you from trying out all three banks?  That way you can truely find out which online savings account is going to be best for you.