Getting the most out of your savings account is a must. It isn’t enough anymore to just have your money in a pot doing nothing. That money should work for you, even if its just a few extra dollars a month that you earn in interest.

Online banks have the highest rates, and for good reason. They want business. Its hard to envision having all of your money locked into an online bank and this trust issue is why online banks pay more. They want to buy your trust and use your money to make you and them more of it.

Online-based high-yield savings accounts have minimal upfront costs because they operate almost entirely online, therefore they can offer you better savings interest rates. An online bank will require you to link a brick and mortar checking account to them to facilitate the transfer of funds.

Higher rates can sometimes mean that the bank is struggling to bring in business deposits. Before putting your money into any bank, you should know what the bank’s Safe & Sound rating is. Bricks and mortar banks are no safer than an online bank. What matters is how the bank is managed, not whether you can walk into a branch.

A bit of advice for those that don’t like chasing the higher rates every three months is to not only focus on who has the highest rate right now, but who has a consistently higher rate than everyone else. Two online banks, which are banks that work completely over the internet and have to be linked up to a brick and mortar bank, are HSBC  and GMAC. They both have had high interest rates over a long period of time.

Bankrate.com has a great savings calculator that can show you your gains on any of your top picks. You can put your choices on autopilot and experiment with different rates, deposit amounts terms, etc. Its just like playing the stock market on paper, before going into the pit. Its good practice and you can see whether or not now is the best time for you to put your money into an online bank.