Bank of America, the second-largest bank in the country, currently pays around 0.01% annual percentage yield on its standard savings account.
That means $10,000 parked there for a full year earns you roughly one dollar.
One dollar, before taxes, while the bank lends your money out at rates many times higher.
The rate is posted on the bank's own website.
What keeps it alive is inertia: millions of customers opened a checking account years ago, let a savings account ride along, and never looked at the yield again.
Top-yield online savings accounts have spent much of the past two years in the 4% to 5% range, depending on what the Federal Reserve is doing with rates.
On $10,000, the gap between 0.01% and 4% is about $400 a year.
On $50,000, you're talking roughly $2,000 annually — real money that quietly walks out the door every month.
Bank of America's net interest income — the spread between what it pays depositors and what it earns on loans and securities — has run in the tens of billions of dollars per year.
Low deposit rates are a feature of that machine, not a bug.
The bank will happily tell you about its Preferred Rewards tiers, which bump your savings yield if you park enough money across accounts, but the base rate stays near zero for everyone else.
Open a high-yield savings account at an online bank or a brokerage, link it to your existing checking account, and move the balance.
Transfers typically take one to two business days.
Keep a small cushion at the big bank if you like the branches and the ATM network — convenience has value — but there's little reason to keep your emergency fund earning pennies when the same dollars can earn a real return elsewhere.
Some online accounts have minimum balances or monthly fees; read the fine print.
If you're chasing a promotional rate, note when the teaser period ends.
And keep an eye on the Fed: if rates get cut, those 4%-plus yields will drift down too.
The point isn't to chase the absolute highest number forever.
It's to stop accepting the lowest one by default.
Banks count on customers treating savings accounts like furniture — always there, never examined.
That's the entire business model behind a 0.01% yield.
Final Thoughts
Check your statement this week, do the math on what you're actually earning, and decide whether loyalty to a logo is worth hundreds of dollars a year.