Interest rates on savings and CDs have declined overall with the economy in turmoil. But there are still some good offers available on the Internet or in local communities. While looking through the sports section of a newspaper, Clark saw a credit union offering more than 6 percent interest on savings. Then when he was traveling, he saw another newspaper ad for a bank offering around 5.75 percent on longer-term CDs. These rates are much higher than you'd typically find in the marketplace right now. So it's your assignment to seek out these good deals. Right now there's a lot of oddball stuff like this Washington Mutual offer: WaMu is having trouble attracting new checking account customers in Illinois, Texas and Georgia. So their current "Savings for Success" promotion offers 6.5 percent on savings for a year to residents in select states. There's a limit to how much you can put in, but this is a great rate. Clark's advice is to shop locally with small credit unions and banks trying to attract deposits. If you're looking at CDs, longer-term CDs are actually paying lower than shorter-term ones right now. That's because the banks are guessing there's a recession coming and they don't want to pay out high long-term rates. But the great thing is that there are still some banks and credit unions paying more than 5 percent on 5-year CDs. Usually, you'd want to ladder your CD investments (1 year, 3 years, 5 years) so you always have money maturing and could take advantage of historically higher rates for longer CDs.