I've only had my high-yield cash account for 4 months, but I've already earned over $111 in interest

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I've only had my high-yield cash account for 4 months, but I've already earned over $111 in interest

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Wealthfront cash accounts offer one of the highest interest rates on the market.

Four months ago, I opened a cash account with Wealthfront. I had finally had enough of earning 0.01% on my money with the savings account I had used for years. So I decided to take action and move part of our emergency fund over to a high-yield cash account with Wealthfront.

Overall, I couldn't be happier with my decision. Here's a quick look at how much interest I've earned so far and how much I could earn down the road.

How much interest I've earned with Wealthfront

I opened my Wealthfront account on July 9 with an initial deposit of $20,000. Then, at the end of July, I moved another $1,000 over to Wealthfront.

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I haven't made another deposit since that time. So for the majority of those four months, I've earned interest on a principal of $21,000.

And how much interest have I earned? $111.57.

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Wealthfront

So, in just four months, I've earned over $111 on money that was essentially earning me nothing before.

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To put things in perspective, with my old bank I would have only earned a little over $2 in one year on that amount of money. And it would have taken me over 50 years to earn what I've made in four months with Wealthfront.

Open your own Wealthfront high-yield cash account today and watch your money grow »

Now that I see how much money I was wasting every month, I'm kicking myself for not moving to a high-yield savings account sooner.

How much interest could I earn down the road?

Just for fun, I decided to run the numbers to see how much interest I could earn with Wealthfront moving forward. Using Wealthfront's recent interest rate of 2.07% and assuming that I never made any additional deposits, here's how much interest I could earn with Wealthfront over time.

  • 1 Year: $439
  • 5 Years: $2,288
  • 10 Years: $4,825
  • 25 Years: $14,219
  • 50 Years: $38,065

That's right, in the amount of time that I would have earned around a measly $100 with my old savings account, I could earn over $38,000 with my Wealthfront cash account.

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And in this scenario, my total account value would rise to over $59,000.

Ultimately, the Fed will determine how much I make with Wealthfront over time

There's only one "catch" to the scenario I played out above. It assumed that the interest rate on my Wealthfront cash account would stay exactly the same over time.

But, in reality, that could never be the case. Like other banks, Wealthfront bases its APY on the Fed's interest rate at the time. And if the Fed rate goes down, so will the interest rate on my Wealthfront account.

This has actually already happened three times in the four months that I've been a Wealthfront customer. In August, Wealthfront notified me via email that my rate was being dropped from 2.57% to 2.32% due to a Fed rate cut.

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Wealthfront

At the end of September, Wealthfront published a blog post letting customers know that the latest Fed cut was forcing it to lower rates to 2.07%. And on November 1, Wealthfront lowered its interest rate again in response to the Fed's cuts, to 1.82%.

The good news? As Wealthfront pointed out in both instances, the rate it offers is still 20 times more than the national average. And if the Fed raises rates in the future, Wealthfront says that it will raise its rates too.

No one can know what the Fed interest rate will be one year from now, much less five or 10 years down the road.

But I do know that Wealthfront is committed to offering some of the best rates on the market, whether it goes up or down. That's really all that I can ask for. And that's why I'm currently a satisfied customer and plan to stick with Wealthfront for the foreseeable future.

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A high-yield cash account from Wealthfront can earn you 20 times more interest than a typical bank savings account. Open a Wealthfront account today to start earning more »

Disclosure: This post is brought to you by the Personal Finance Insider team. We occasionally highlight financial products and services that can help you make smarter decisions with your money. We do not give investment advice or encourage you to adopt a certain investment strategy. What you decide to do with your money is up to you. If you take action based on one of our recommendations, we get a small share of the revenue from our commerce partners. This does not influence whether we feature a financial product or service. We operate independently from our advertising sales team.

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