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What impacts bank account rates mid-2024?
By Spencer Tierney | NerdWallet
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Rates on savings accounts and certificates of deposit remain higher than they’ve been for most of the past decade. But what exactly impacts the interest rate of your bank account?
Let’s break down a few factors.
A high Fed rate keeps savings rates up
From March 2022 to July 2023, the Federal Reserve steadily increased its federal funds rate, or Fed rate, from nearly zero to around 5%. The 11 rate increases were the Fed’s attempt at curbing high inflation, which has dropped significantly since that March. The Fed rate itself is the one U.S. banks use to borrow money overnight between each other, and a higher rate also means higher borrowing costs.
Banks and credit unions, in turn, take their cue from Fed rate increases to raise their rates on certain loans, savings accounts and certificates of deposit. Banks often fund new loans and investments using deposits, or the money in customers’ bank accounts. Higher savings rates help attract more customers. From March 2022 to May 2024, national average rates rose from 0.06% to 0.45% for savings accounts and 0.15% to 1.80% for one-year CDs, based on a NerdWallet analysis.
Here’s how much the middle class has shrunk since the 1970s
A look at the proportion of Americans in the lower, middle and upper-income tiers and how numbers have changed.
Based on a Pew Research Center study. People are assigned to income tiers based on their household incomes in the calendar year before the survey year, after incomes have been adjusted for the number of people living in each household. Shares may not total 100% due to rounding.
The middle class has fallen behind on two key counts. The growth in income since 1970 has not kept pace with that of the upper-income tier. And the share of total U.S. household income held by the middle class has plunged.
Who is middle class?
Households in all tiers had much higher incomes in 2022 than in 1970, after adjusting for inflation. But the gains for middle- and lower-income households were less than the gains for upper-income households.
Sources: Pew Research Center, Congressional Budget Office, American Community Survey
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A mixed-use development may finally replace Seminole’s kitschy Flea World
Nearly a decade after the popular but kitschy Flea World attraction closed, a developer has presented new plans to build a sprawling complex of hundreds of apartments, a hotel, offices and shops on the vacant land near Sanford.
It’s the third time someone has tried to develop the weed-filled property off U.S. Highway 17-92, across from Seminole’s expanding Five Points government center. Seminole officials have long considered the area “blighted” and tried to attract high-end development.
On Tuesday, Seminole commissioners are scheduled to vote on plans for the Reagan Center development that call for up to 1,003 apartments, a 200-room hotel and roughly 1.3 million square feet of retail and office space spread across 75 acres northwest of Ronald Reagan Boulevard.
But residents and nearby property owners say the plans do not do enough to address the increasing traffic congestion and flood risk for nearby homes.
“That area is already flooding, and they want to develop it even more? That’s absurd,” said Tally Sinclair, who along with her husband owns 16 wooded acres tucked between the Flea World site and dozens of older homes near Lake Dot and Sunland Park.