Save Your Money. That’s what the top of my debit card for ING Direct’s Electric Orange account says; and it’s a slogan that the company tends to promote very heavily. An ABC News article featured on the company’s web site goes so far as to say that “…CEO of the financial institution ING DIRECT, [Arkadi] Kuhlmann is the rarest of bankers: He refuses to deal in customer-tempting mortgages and credit cards. He finds it immoral to make 21 percent interest on your next trip to the mall, and if you can’t afford it, he doesn’t want you to go to the mall at all. The only way to save this country, he says, is to save our money.”For those who aren’t in the know, ING Direct one of the pioneers of online-only banking. They have highly competitive interest rates on their accounts–4.3% APY on savings and at least 3.5% on checking–all with no fees or minimums. Every time I’ve had to contact their customer service department, I had a human answer the call within three rings, and I received top-notch support.While most other banks have rewards for spending your money (think ThankYou Network and Visa Extras), ING encourages saving it by giving you a high interest rate. Doesn’t it seem slightly disingenuous, then, to include an overdraft line of credit in the definition of “Spending Power” for their new online checking account? And yet, there it is on the Electric Orange account page, in black and white:

As of this writing, the interest rate on the Overdraft Line is 11.75%, which is indeed lower than most credit cards and other bank overdraft lines. However, when you consider that tapping in to that line could spiral you into some pretty serious debt, I think it would be better off left out of calculations of “Spending Power,” perhaps defined as an “Emergency Line of Credit” with the interest rate for tapping into it up front and center rather than buried in an FAQ page.In the interest of full disclosure, the default overdraft line of credit is $250. I requested an increase just in case my direct deposit didn’t change over before all of my bills started coming out of this account, and ended up with the ridiculous limit of $5000.I still plan to use Electric Orange as my primary checking account–avoiding the overdraft line–and keep my savings with ING as well, but it would make me feel better if they would change their terminology to something more transparent; after all, the CEO himself “…refuses to deal in customer-tempting mortgages and credit cards,” and what’s more tempting than having “Spending Power” that is hundreds or thousands of dollars more than is actually in your account?