ING Accounts

The days of depositing your money into a normal checking account at the bank are over. If you have money sitting in a savings account earning a typical 1 or 2 percent interest, you're losing out on some easy, automatic money.

The secret is in the ING Direct Orange accounts, which you've probably heard of on TV advertising 4.5% on the money you deposit.

I heard these commercials too, and I thought, what's the catch? So I looked into it and found out a few things.

First of all, the only drawback to an ING Direct account is that ING Direct isn't what they call a "brick and mortar" bank, meaning there's no building you can walk into and take your money, like a normal bank. That's the single "downside," if you can even call it that.

Your Orange account is FDIC insured, so there's no risk involved. It's simply a high yield savings account, with no minimum deposit, no hidden fees of any kind no restrictions on taking your money out.

In fact, your money remains in the checking account you already have.

You can make hundreds of dollars more every year just by opening an ING Direct savings account. That's the bottom line. I just took advantage of a particular offer where I opened an account and they threw 25 bucks into it just for being a new account holder.

Makes a lot more sense than the old-fashioned banks. Literally!