Weekly CD Rates: Updated May 13, 2009

Certificate of deposit rates continued to decline this past week. Continuing their decent since last year when one year certificate of deposit rates could be found over four percent, sometime as high as five percent if the bank offering the one year CD rate was in need of raising capital.

The average rate for one year CD rates is currently at 1.45 percent, down this past week from 1.48 percent. Longer term CD rates are not much higher these days, five year CD rates are averaging 2.50 percent, unchanged since last week. At this time we do not recommend locking into longer term CD rates since rates are so low. 48 month CD rates this week are averaging 2.26 percent, down from 2.27 percent last week. 36 month CD rates are unchanged this week at 2.06 percent. 24 month CD rates are lower this week, the average rate for a 24 month CD is 1.81 percent, down from last week when the average rate was 1.83 percent. 18 month CD rates are also lower this week at 1.59 percent, down from last week when the average 18 month CD rate was 1.61 percent.

CD rates will stay low for the foreseeable future at least until the economy is out of a recession or inflation starts gearing up and the Federal Reserve Bank feels a need to raise interest rates to keep a lid on inflation. We don’t anticipate CD rates going up until later this year or early next year.