[joshstrange]

I’m pretty sure I agree with all your points, that’s why I don’t use HMB as anything more than a place to keep my emergency funds and get a high interest rate. I direct a small portion of my paycheck via direct deposit and that’s enough to trigger their logic to activate the saving rate (you are required to have DD). HMB is better than One’s “Auto Save” pocket because I can move in money at anytime and it qualifies for the saving rate vs One having to only come from DD (you can’t move money into that pocket).

Edit: With the way I only send a small % of my paycheck to HMB, I don’t have to care about saving X% since according to their calculations I’m always saving 100% of my “paycheck”. The rest of my paycheck goes to One Financial where I use it as-needed without worrying about disqualifying myself from a higher saving tier.

[maxov]

Gotcha. I didn't consider just putting a small amount of direct deposit into HMB, that's pretty clean! Might try it myself :) I doubt they expect most users to do something like this though, which may explain why they're able to offer a rate that high.

[joshstrange]

Absolutely. I know a number of people use this “trick” and it’s been working for me for over 6 months. I can’t remember if referral codes are allowed here but I have 2 invites which let you jump to Tier 1 (3%) right away instead of having to go up 1 tier a month (it skips waiting 3 months before you hit 3%). I used a Black Friday deal that gave the same “perk”.

Full disclosure: using my code would give me 1 “undo” or something like that. Essentially it would let me move up a tier 1 time if I were to fall for some reason. I don’t think I have any use for something like that but I always fell a little scummy offering referral codes so I didn’t want to leave it out.

If you want it, my email is in my profile.