In spetember of 2006, I opened up a new money market account at my local bank. They were listed for several months in Money magazine as having one of the highest money market rates in the country.

The rate was 5.25% and I treated this account as if it was my savings account. I rarely wrote a check out of it.

We sold our last spec house in January of 2007 and I put the whole check into this account. One month later, the account paid us $1,793.00 in interest for just one month.
Since I never needed to balance this account, I kept the monthly statements in a note book. Things were great for a while. Then the interest rate dropped to 3.1% but still the interest was adding up.

(It has always been my dream to some day retire and live on the interest since we (dh and I) will never receive a pension from anyone.)

Yesterday, I cleaned out the notebook. We are now receiving an interest rate of 1/10 of 1%. My last interest payment was only $2.50. A big difference in that and almost $1800.oo!!!

So, now I will start putting my new money market statements in the notebook. It is only paying 9/10 of 1 percent, but still better than 1/10! I have 3 c.d.'s coming due in 2 weeks, but the c.d. rate is only 9/10 of 1%, so I might as well put that money in the new money market. As least I can get to it easily if c.d. rates ever go up. Oh yes, I will also add some to my ING account since it is paying 1.1% now and has been for a while.

I have an amortization book that I bought over 30 years ago. The lowest rate in that book is 3%. No one ever dreamed that rates would ever go this low. When I worked for Surety savings and loan, we were paying 6% on savings, 8% on c.d.'s and charging 9% on mortgages.

I miss the good old days!