Finances & Money

ReviewMe: Bankaholic’s new CD and Money Market Analyzer Tools

Bankaholic.com ordered up a paid review of two of their new tools today, and I decided to accept. I tested them out, and here’s what I thought.

About the Site

First, Bankaholic wanted me to explain that the banks listed on their tools do not pay to be listed. This is a claim subject to legal ramifications, so I’ll trust them on this.

The site itself is a bit difficult to navigate, and I wouldn’t have noticed the new tools unless I knew to look for them. They’re listed below the Adsense unit on the left sidebar, in a “Pages” section. I would think these tools should be advertised prominently on the page rather than hidden in a relatively anonymous area.

Also, the number of recent posts shown on the right sidebar should be cut down to maybe 5-10, rather than the 27 currently shown.

Lastly, the footer links don’t work and appear to be duplicate. Perhaps the site owner is working on the details, but until then, they should be removed if they’re useless.

CD Rates

Bankaholic offers a tool to rank and order banks by their current CD rates. The “best CD rates” tool shows some of the big names, and not so big names, in the banking world, and lets you sort by the following:

• Minimum Deposit
• Length of Term
• Annual Percentage Yield (APY)
• Review Ranking

The tool itself is quite useful, unless you want to order based on bank name, or find out where your favorite bank ranks in the list. The banks are listed by images, rather than names, and you can’t sort by the bank name. It’s a minor inconvenience that hopefully the site owner will correct shortly (hint, hint). The images are nice, but added text would be better.

Money Market Savings Accounts

Bankaholic also offers a tool to rank online savings accounts (aka money market accounts). The tool is very similar to the CD ranking tool, but without the option of Length of Term since they do not apply to money market accounts. The same issue with sorting and viewing by bank names applies as well.

Reviewing Banks

Currently, the 6% interest offer for FNBO Bank’s money market account shows 17 Reviews (sorry, can’t link directly to it). Most of the reviews are relevant, but some are not. This speaks to the fact the site does not require authentication (or even any information) to leave a comment for a bank.

I left a positive comment for a bank, but since I have no accountability for my words, I could literally say anything, good or bad, about a bank that could sway a reader without worrying about the bank or reader tracking it back to me. Granted, there’s only so much you can do to entice comments without making it too difficult to leave the comment.

Final Recommendation

There are a number of tools for comparing CDs and Money Market accounts, but personally, I’m not a rate chaser, so I don’t use them. Now that I’m aware of a fairly easy-to-use site, I’ll probably bookmark Bankaholic.com for when I’d like to look into current rates.

_{Disclaimer: This review was a PAID, SPONSORED post, but the content was not influenced by the sponsor. I would not have browsed to Bankaholic had they not purchased a review, but I feel my readers would be interested in their new tools.}