High Yield vs. Regular Savings Account

We’re in the process of selling our house in the old city and, hopefully, that means we will be able to walk away with a very good start towards a down payment to buy a house in our new, and much more expensive, city.  We’ve got one offer, but they low-balled us for quite close to less than we actually paid for the house, which was really irritating.  Things have appreciated in our neighborhood at least 5%, from what our realtors tell us, but the potential buyer insisted that it had not really increased in value at all.  More on that in a subsequent post. 

Today’s topic is savings account and where and how much of your funds that you stash at your day to day bank vs. a high yield account (if you split them up at all, that is).  Our emergency fund has just been sitting in our savings account at our local credit union earning a measly 0.1% since we used the majority of our old savings to put a down payment on the house we are now selling (but kept several months living expenses in reserve, of course). 

Once we switch banks, we are trying to decide what to do with our savings, whether to just stick it part of it in a high yield savings account and keep a certain amount for emergencies at the bank where we have our checking account or whether to just keep all of it in our savings account at the new bank.

As far as I see it, most of the online banks will give you somewhere between 0.7 and 1 percent vs. the measly 0.1 or below you will get from a regular savings account.  At the same time, leaving it in a regular savings account at whatever bank you have your checking account at means it is instantly available in the event you need all of it.  (Yes, I know that you can wire it from an online account or account with another bank to your day to day bank but that takes several days, aside from one option I discovered where some banks will let you do such a transfer effective immediately, but this comes with significant fees as one might expect). 

We’re leaning towards splitting it so most goes into the high yield savings (which is almost a misnomer in today’s interest rate environment) and then leaving the rest in our savings account at whatever new financial institution we choose. 

How do you handle your savings-all in one account at your day to day bank, all in a high yield account at a different bank than your day to day bank or some other arrangement?  How do you split your savings if you split it between multiple accounts or institutions?