Banks

Savings accounts get taxed as well! If you were investing a large amount of money ie over 200,000 then it would work out much better to put in a term deposit. But for small amounts of money there wont be a huge amount of diffrence in the balance at the end of the day. And if you want to have the reassurance of being able to access your money in an emergency its probably worth leaving it in your normal savings account.   

re the tax thing you get taxed on your current tax rate for your earnings.

Bonus bonds is something you dont get taxed on, BUT their returns work out to be equivilent of 4%. But it is fun thinking you might win $500000

DH and I have done tons of research into this. We are going to end up going term deposit (probably 6 months rather than 12). But check around the banks as we found kiwi bank and rabo plus had the best rates when we checked them. But also DH has been looking at doing it with a finance company where we would get 9.9% interest.

Yeah we aren't going with a random finance company for our investment. We will go with one that is big and has been around for quite a while.

I wouldn't go with any finance co IMHO! The market has gone steadily downhill in the last year or so, think Provincial (big firm - I know someone who worked there and it was a nightmare), Western Bay Finance etc. The safer the better these days I reckon. But that's just me, I would rather come out even or have a little interest. Have you thought about a trust account? A law firm we had money in had a 9% rate I think, and you could access it whenever.