Last month I moved all of mine and my fiance's finances to ING Direct from a brick & mortar bank. I enjoyed being able to create multiple savings accounts and initiating automatic transfers to be able to pay all of our student loans and other payments easily. I had the great idea to move all of the due dates for the loans and payments we make to the end of the month in order to keep our money in the high-yield (3%) savings accounts the longest in order to generate as much interest as possible before we handed over the money to those who we owed it to.

It dawned upon me today that perhaps this is foolish since the interest rates on those loans range from 4.5% to 7.5%, with one car loan even being 8.91%, well above the 3% we're making in the savings account. Would it make more sense in the long run financially to move those due dates up to the beginning of the month so that the money earmarked for each of those loan payments goes to lowering the interest generated by the principal of those loans over the course of each month instead of keeping it in my bank accounts generating 3% in the form of savings interest?

I will be able to make each loan payment on the first of the month easily, so I'd like to maximize my total worth over the course of the repayment of these loans. I know it gets tricky since school loans are good loans to keep due to tax breaks, but ideally I'm looking for the best answer to have my pocket be the fattest in the long run. Thanks in advance for any help anyone can give.

Stop worrying so much about the due dates as the outstanding debt. Start throwing every dime you have toward that 9 percent car loan and as soon as possible. You are not earning anything period as long as you are paying out almost 8% and earning 3 percent regardless of when you make the payments.

It doesn't really matter over the long run (it will only change the interest paid in total by ~30 days) if you pay the first of the month or the end as with this you are moving the actual due date so each time you pay you are still paying for ~30 days of interest each month so therefore its accruing at the same rate (other than the first month you move it). The best way to avoid the interest rates is to pay more than is due every month and pay it off faster.

It depends on how your lender works and how they calculate interest. There may be a grace period or other feature, so it might not matter exactly when the payment is due.

For credit cards that you keep a balance on, there probably is a difference.

Call your lenders and ask if you pay more interest by paying at the end of the month. They'll know the nuts and bolts of how your accounts work. I suspect you won't get a huge benefit out of changing the dates back, but you never know.

Please let us know what you end up doing.