COLORADO SPRINGS — Wednesday's announcement from the Federal Reserve to cut short-term interest rates by a half point is good news for people wanting to borrow money. However, it also has the opposite impact on savings accounts, but experts say it's not something to panic over.
When interest rates go up, it means banks are putting more money into savings counts, and conversely, when rates go down it means less money going into savings for you.
This doesn't mean consumers should take all their money out of savings. Like most financial decisions, experts say: it depends.
"Probably the biggest thing that we're talking about with our clients when it comes to changes of interest rates is that everything goes through cycles and things will be up and down," Harrison Hunter a certified financial planner with Northwestern Mutual said, "it really does depend on everybody's individual scenario."
If someone is sitting on a lot of money in savings, it might be time to move it somewhere else. Whether that's in retirement accounts or other investments.
"I joke with a lot of my clients, but there's a lot of truth to it: frankly, you're going broke slowly because if the buying power of your money isn't keeping up with inflation, the money you have sitting there just isn't going to keep up," Hunter said.
One key is thinking about your goals moving forward with your finances to determine what the best case is.
"When we're talking about long-term money, money that you don't plan on using for the next ten, 15, 20 years. That's the money that we typically see makes more sense to have inside of retirement accounts or in investment accounts," Hunter said.
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