Old finance guy speaking out his butt here - but consider this:

CD's are compared to the "regular investment market" a very low risk - medium yield investment. The goal is to speculate and reinvest this money so it makes more money than they have to pay you. Much more...
Most of the time it does.

When you are looking at a teaser like the 6/9/12 month vehicle you are getting the same bang for your buck as by investing it over 3 Years.

The art with CD's is to see how the economy plays it's part in them. Relatively safe money - low risk investments - I locked in a few grand at almost 6% last year. Find a way to balance your CD portfolio so CD's mature and get eligible for re investment. If there is the slightest chance that you may need to access the money don't tie it up. You can have a CD mature every 3 months, it will keep you busy and you need to know how you are doing financially. If, like you mentioned you can guarantee yourself not needing the money - you could lock it in, but everytime you do so you limit your chances of taking the profits from miracoulously increased interest. Imagine you locking 20000 into a 60 month CD @ 4% and 7 months down the road Capital One gives you 5.4 for daily money again? Sucks!
I advise CD's only if the overall financial condition allows for joking around with it. There are more tax effective vehicles that can net you more than the lousy 4%, without tying up the money.

The banks figure the consumers confidence into the system - therfore giving you a teaser to sign something up. Many many million people in this country could not and would not lock in 100 dollars if they got 100% interest, because the term may put them upside down financially. If they get you to commit 1000 for 6 months (thats better than nothing for 60) they gladly take the mass accumulated this way and reinvest it for even bigger profits.

Americans are lousy savers - but great spenders. If you walk into a bank at age 40 and don't at least owe more than you can work back in the next 20 years they look at you like a alien just walked through the door. The fun starts when people cashed in on a HELC for 2% and turned around investing the same money paying it off by interest from CD's.


60/4 is a joke in my opinion, it reflects a very weak market.
Might as well be the best interest we see for a while... so your mileage may vary and should be subject to a financial advisor.