Bask Bank Review: My Go-To Savings Account

Bask was a good deal a couple of years ago when it was paying 1 mile/year and interest rates were below 1%. But since then, interest rates have gone up about 6x and Bask has increased its miles payout by 2.5x so the value proposition is far worse. I took out most of my money and put them in treasuries (which are paying well more than the 5% Bask pays in cash interest).

How quick / easy is it to transfer money to and from your checking account?

You're not looking at the tax situation correctly, no one is paying 37% because that's a marginal rate, it's actually impossible for your effective rate to be over 37%.

It may make sense for you to take miles since your job is essentially using them but for anyone else taking advantage of the high cash rates is a much better deal.

I think what he's saying is that if you are already in the 37% bracket because of a high income, additional marginal earnings would be taxed at the 37%. He forgot state taxes too, so that might add 10%+ in some high tax states putting people close to 50% on this marginal income. Of course if you are already making $600k, you probably don't care too much about making a tiny bit extra in miles, nor do you care about the additional taxes involved.

Also agree that the cash rate is a no-brainer right now. Miles are better when interest rates are closer to zero.

Im getting 5.4% at UBS so ill stick with that, now if you could earn Loyalty points on this i would consider opening an account.

Why doesnt AA allow you to earn loyalty points up to a certain amount, i understand why they dont allow all the BASK balance to count but why not allow a max say 10k loyalty points. This would help get a lot of accounts open.

I have $200k in spread out over all three options. I love that Ben turned me on to this and have generated over 8325k AA FF miles. HOWEVER, I recently tried to register all of my accounts into my living trust and was told very short and curtly that Bask Bank does not allow accounts to be registered as business or trust.
That is a deal breaker for me and I will be moving my CD out upon expiry in October and my savings account sooner. As a points junkie, I don't think think I can get away from the AA mileage program and will just have to let my heirs deal with that in probate!
All that being said, the service and ease of transfer has been seamless and I hate to walk away from 1/2 of my position here.

"If you were in the highest tax bracket of 37% (which is worst case scenario)..."

Posters are right that's a marginal not overall rate but in some place (say Portland, OR) the top state rate is almost 10% and for high income earners in Multnomah Country as high as an additional 4%. So your marginal tax rate could easily reach 50% meaning a 5% yield on any spare cash would put half that in your pocket.

That said you can get over 5% today in a Treasury Bill Money Market which would be exempt from State and local taxes which is probably a better deal than earning miles with Bask

I am signing up for 5.75 cd for 15 months first thing in the morning with Ctizens State Bank and did one this morning for 13 months @ 5.50 with Pacific Western a regular bank with locations
Can’t think of a reason to do anything with Bark Bank
Perhaps for miles as you can pull out quickly if something comes up that sounds a lot better
And whatever happened to their sign up bonuses ?

Oops my bad just saw the promotion
Might do the miles one
Thanks for the post

Agree with Jeff's comment about it being a good deal when interest rates were low, but this is clearly a promotion because you do not take into account inflation, and a bank is not necessarily safe. If inflation is between 6% and 7% APR and you are making 5% or less on the savings then it is not a good option. Keep in mind that banks are not necessarily safe. They do fail as we have seen with SVB bank. It seems like having this account is more trouble than it is worth.

You mention that you earn 2.5 AA points per dollar deposited, but how long does the money have to sit there? Could you deposit and then move the money the next day?

BaskBank is good, they could improve upon CD rates and adding more terms, also including a reward for renewing CD. A money market account would be nice.

Ben - all the bloggers out there include some version of "Note that AAdvantage miles earned through Bask Bank don’t count as Loyalty Points toward AAdvantage status."

Can you be value added and get a quote from Bask or AA stating why that's the case? Sure, it makes it easier to get status but so do various tricks that people employee.

Updated to add that I've earned over 500k through AA, particularly when rates were low and I was getting 1 mile per dollar. I would be incentivized to start earning AA miles again (despite better options available to me - I have near $0 earning interest at Bask) if I also earned loyalty points.