Interest Rate Web Sites Yield Cheaper Loans, Smarter Investments

Whether you're shopping for a car, a house, or an investment, you need to know interest rates, and the information you get about rates needs to be current and easy to understand. Here's why: Every time the Federal Reserve raises rates, the cost of borrowing money goes up and the value of certain investments, such as bonds and bond funds, goes down.

For timely information on the ins, outs, ups, and downs of interest rates, the Web is tough to beat--provided you know where to look. To that end, we examined several sites that provide the same high-quality information used by investment professionals. Then we picked our three favorites, each with a specific focus for people with particular needs. And best of all, the sites we recommend are free.

What's in a Site

The best sites offer two kinds of information: interest rates and an analysis of what those numbers mean to you as a consumer. The interest rate data alone is fine if you know what you're looking for and just want to shop around for a good deal. But many people will need help interpreting what the numbers mean. The analysis and commentary components of the sites we reviewed provide guidance and interpretation of what's ahead for rates, and help you plot your future investment or loan. Thankfully, most of the sites also provide helpful online glossaries of obscure financial jargon.

Among our favorites are three sites that cover the gamut of interest rate coverage. Each one also has a specialty: Bankrate.com lets you find the highest rates for Certificates of Deposit and the lowest rates on credit cards; IMoneyNet.com offers insight into loan and money market fund rates; and Bloomberg.com gives a lot of good information on more-complicated investments, such as bonds.