Money in the Bank! (Fidelity Investments)

Stephan:
Do you have extra money that you don't need for another couple of months that's just sitting in your checking account? This is a conversation I've had about 4 times this week and since a lot of us are actors with fluctuating accounts, I thought I'd pass it along.

It started with a question from one of my roommates, Sonja, "I've got this money just sitting in my account and I don't know what to do with it. Do you have any ideas?" She came to me because I'm something of a nerd when it comes to reading books on money management and doing research on investing.

"Sure that's something I was dealing with in August" I said, "I can't guarantee this is the best answer for you, but I've found something that works for me." I went on to tell her about my accounts at Fidelity Investments (www.fidelity.com). I started an account there for my Roth IRA right after college (thanks to my Grandparent's wisdom), but more recently I started an account there for an amount of a few thousand dollars that was just sitting in my checking account waiting to be used. They have a money market account that right now is getting about 5% interest and you can link it to your checking account at your bank to get that money back into your checking account the next day if you needed to.

The best part about it is that you can go in and talk to somebody at Fidelity for free and they can detail all of your options and give you other great ideas, even if you don't already have an account there (check out their locations). Sonja and I went in yesterday and met with one of the guys there and it looks like it's exactly what she was looking for. The funny thing was that while I was there I ran into a friend of mine who was in a commercial class I took a couple of years ago. When we started talking about it, he realized that he could use something like that too. I thought I'd pass it on to you!