Rates are clearly going up now. Whether you have extra cash that you are looking to move from a bank paying basically nothing or are removing money from a volatile stock market, here are some places to consider putting your money today.

The great thing is that these five offerings is that they are all online offerings that enable you to make more on your money without getting off the couch. However, you should note that some brick-and-mortar banks and credit unions are also becoming rate competitive.

Always check the best savings rates for local banks and credit unions where you live, and the best CD rates for local banks and credit unions where you live as you may find better rates there.

But, here are five very interesting online products.

1. Dollar Savings Direct, A Division of Emigrant – 1.60% Online Savings Account

Dollar Savings Direct is one of several Emigrant subsidiaries that we have seen over the last decade. These days Dollar Savings Direct is their most aggressive savings account. As savings rates increased in late 2017, Dollar Savings was always ahead of the curve, and while there are others who have now matched their rate, it seems like a safe bet to assume that they will continue to be aggressive as rates rise.

Dollar Savings Direct has good user reviews on BestCashCow and we recently wrote about the bank here.

2. Purepoint MUFG Union – 1.60% Online Savings Account

Purepoint entered the online banking arena in 2017, and while they have been slower to raise rates that many of their competitors, they recently catapulted their savings rate up to 1.60% provided you maintain a $10,000 balance.

Purepoint has good user reviews on BestCashCow (hyper: ) and stands out for the speed of their inbound and outbound ACH transfers. We recently wrote about the bank here.

3. Live Oak Bank – 1.60% Online Savings Account

Live Oak is a new entrant to online banking. This relatively small North Carolina bank has entered with a very aggressive online savings rate. There are very few reviews on BestCashCow so far, and they are not universally great, but we think that the fact that they are aggressively courting new deposit accounts makes them worth a look for savings.

4. Live Oak Bank – 2.10% One-Year CD Account

As we wrote recently, we want to be pretty cautious about CDs in a rising rate environment, especially one where rates may now be poised to rise quite quickly. But, if you are inclined to lock in for the next year, Live Oak has the best 1-year rate at the moment and their early withdrawal penalty on a 1-year CD is only 3 months’ interest.

5. Sallie Mae Bank – 2.00% 1-Year CD

Sallie Mae’s early withdrawal penalty on a one-year CD is also only 3 months’ interest. There are user reviews on BestCashCow where users cite as an issue unduly long periods before money clears and is credited to their account. However, if you open a CD funding it directly from an external account, you will begin earning interest on it immediately (and maturity will be one year from that date of opening), even though the principal may not have technically cleared.

These are the places where we would look to put new money to work now.

A recent Wall Street Journal report indicated that there have been unprecedented closures of bank branches in the 12 months ending June 2017. Some 1,700 branches were closed that period, the largest one-year decline ever recorded. And, the pace of additional branch closures continued in the second half of 2017.

Obviously, the motivating forces for such branch closures were savings and efficiencies sought by America’s banks and, even more, the fact that fewer and fewer people make use of branches for their every day banking, preferring to do all transactions on line. In fact, banking like most every other routine activity has moved almost entirely to the internet for the vast majority of people.

So it is not surprising that on-line banking has made it possible and profitable for banks to effect considerable savings on personnel and plant. Reducing the number of branches is just good business sense. And, it is certain that numbers will continue to decline at a fairly rapid pace in the years ahead.

But there is a real social cost that attends this reality. And, that is the role banks, especially local branches, have served for a Century or more for the elderly population. For those in retirement, local bank branches have long been a favorite place to go to get out of the house, to meet share stories with friendly tellers, and to meet others. Bank visits and checking on daily mail deliveries are top on the list for many if not most middle class, especially urban, men and women in their late sixties and beyond. That is as true today as it was years ago. Bank branches provided, very simply, vital sources of human contact.

The elderly are not on the internet regularly, and surely not to manage whatever dollars they have. The loss of a key destination, an excuse to get out, and an opportunity to meet and greet others makes a whole lot of sense at the corporate level, but there are social costs for millions of older Americans.

Over time, some banks will recognize that continuing to fill a social and a community function can in fact continue to be a profitable endeavor. Perhaps they will even find ways to make it a richer experience for an aging society.

Find bank branches near you here.

Find credit unions near you here.

The stock market is coming off of its most recent highs quite dramatically, and CNBC is full of pundits trying to explain its fall and guess about its future.

People who loose money in the market today will no doubt have opportunities to recover their losses over time, depending on their time horizon. The stock market may have moved to an extreme valuation, but it isn’t a fraud or a bubble.

What is clearly a bubble, however, is all of the coins and cryptocurrencies that have popped up. I have been startled to see them advertised on Facebook (Facebook has since taken these ads down) and to see some of my LinkedIn contacts pushing all sorts of obscure worthless digital tokens.

It is also quite startling that the mainstream media has been celebrating bitcoin rather than pointing out where the fraud occurs.

The New York Times had a great article about fraud in the crypt space yesterday, painting a clear picture of the exchanges and the coins as an out-and-out con.

But, let’s not forget that the rest of the mainstream financial media has been celebrating bitcoin.

Bloomberg interviewed a child in his pajamas.

The CNBC Fast Money crowd recently allowed their platform to become an open discussion of bitcoin to etherium.

What is clear from the NY Times’ article is that bitcoin and all of these crypt currencies are going to be publicly exposed as frauds by the SEC and the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Many their hucksters may even wind up in jail.

There are going to be a lot of people who are going to be hurt and hurt badly in this in this arena. With the mainstream media allowing a fraud to be perpetuated, the only protection for most investors is for bitcoin to go to zero before they are tempted by any of this.