…Talking with a friend over the holiday weekend, I was turned on to a few interesting e-commerce banking/financial tools. If you’re like me, you’ve been seeing commercials for ING for sometime now. But you’ve probably never taken the time to check out the services that they offer.

Well, I’ve learned that they offer an e-savings account (no brick & mortar required) which yields 4.35% annually, with no minimum balance requirement, and no service charges. This is a wonderful contrast to my current savings account, which probably pays 2% if I’m lucky, and I just discovered they charge $5 quarterly for the service/maintenance thereof. I’d be better off keeping my savings in a shoebox under my mattress at that rate of return. I’m in the process of setting up an account with ING, and I’ll soon be transferring the bulk of my savings account to an ING account.

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He also tuned me in to a service called Prosper, which I’m still looking into for the time being, but I think it is a brilliantly unique idea. Basically, it’s like eBay for lenders/borrowers. You need money to consolidate credit card debt? Refinance your high-interest auto-note? Buy your textbooks for med school? Prosper coordinates investors (like you and me) with borrowers (like you and me) and offers a 36-month fully amortized loan, for amounts up to $25,000. In most cases, several “lenders” will together fund a single loan and will receive monthly repayment of their principle & interest. They offer the immediate benefit of a scheduled, structured repayment (long the bane of credit card borrowers) and additionally, they do report good credit to the bureaus, so it helps you get rid of bad debt, at competitive rates, and re-establishes your credit.

Like I said, I’m looking into that, but I feel that I will likely toss a few hundred into it pretty soon and play around with it.

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If you know of any other unconventionally nifty financial thingys, let me know.