Bank of America's standard savings account is still paying a rate that would have looked normal a few years ago, and that is exactly the problem.
The bank's main savings option has hovered around 0.01% to 0.04% depending on the account and balance tier, according to the bank's own published rate information.
On $10,000, that works out to somewhere between one dollar and four dollars over a full year.
The math gets more uncomfortable when you stack it next to what the Federal Reserve has been doing.
The Fed held its benchmark rate in a range of 4.25% to 4.50% after a series of cuts through late 2024 and 2025.
When the Fed moves, high-yield savings accounts tend to follow quickly.
Big-bank legacy savings accounts tend not to move at all.
Online banks and a handful of smaller institutions have been advertising rates in the 3.5% to 4.5% range for much of the past two years, though those rates float and can drop at any time.
Put $10,000 in one of those accounts and you are looking at a few hundred dollars a year instead of a few dollars.
Same money, same federal insurance limits, very different outcome.
So why do millions of people leave cash sitting in a near-zero account?
The checking account, the debit card, the ATM network, and the app are all in one place.
Moving savings means opening a new account, linking it, and waiting a day or two for transfers.
For a lot of households, that friction is worth more than the extra interest.
Many people opened their savings account years ago, set up an automatic transfer, and never looked at the rate again.
A low rate on deposits is cheap funding for them, and there is little incentive to advertise how little your balance is earning.
If you want to check where you stand, pull up your last statement and find the interest paid line.
Multiply that number by twelve to estimate a year.
Then compare it to what the same balance would earn at 4%.
The difference is usually enough to cover a car payment, a few grocery runs, or a chunk of a credit card balance.
A few practical moves: keep one month of expenses in the big-bank account if you like the convenience, and move the rest to a higher-yield savings or money market account.
Set up the transfer as automatic so you do not have to think about it.
Check the new rate every few months, because promotional rates do expire.
And if you are carrying credit card debt at 20%-plus, paying that down usually beats chasing an extra point of savings interest.
One more thing worth knowing: savings rates are not locked in.
If the Fed cuts again, high-yield accounts will likely trim their rates too.
The point is not to find a permanent winner.
It is to stop accepting a near-zero return by default when better options take about twenty minutes to set up.
The real takeaway here is that loyalty to a single bank rarely pays you anything.
Banks compete hard for borrowers and barely compete for savers, and that asymmetry shows up in your statement every month.
Moving your cash is not a dramatic financial overhaul.
Final Thoughts
It is just refusing to leave money on the table.