ING bank offers Black Friday deals

The down side of saving a big chunk of change on Black Friday is that you usually have to spend a lot of money to realize those savings. That's why we at Walletpop were happy to see a Black Friday deal that is literally just about the savings.

On Black Friday, online bank ING Direct will announce special interest rates for opening a CD or the brand's signature Electric Orange checking account (they're keeping mum on the details of those rates until Friday but have added a teaser page to their Web site).

This blog has details of two other promotions, though: a $683 discount off an ING mortgage (the amount is the average dollar cost Americans spend on holiday gifts annually, according to the National Retail Federation) as well as a Cyber Monday 20% discount on trades through ShareBuilder, its trading subsidiary.

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ING's interest rates on accounts and CDs generally stack up favorably against its competitors' offerings, so it will be interesting to see what they plan to roll out.

It's a novel idea, and one that seems especially well-suited to today's recessionary times. Even though our collective savings rate has crept up in recent months (we reported on that last month), Americans still need to save more.

Unfortunately, it seems like all of the incentives, deals and come-ons all want us to spend, spend, spend. Offering consumers an incentive to save instead seems like a really bright idea.

We can only hope some of the big national banks will take note if ING's campaign is successful and offer similar promotions in the future, but we did find one other financial institution that's offering a Black Friday savings sale.

Service Credit Union in New Hampshire is offering a 10% APY on 3-month CDs. Yes, you read that right -- 10%! There's a $250 minimum and a $1,000 maximum. In other words, you won't make a ton of money from this because of the low maximum; however, it's nice that you can participate with only $250.

Unfortunately, you can't open one of these Black Friday CDs over the phone or online, but if you live in New Hampshire, get yourself over to a branch and make your money work a little harder for you.