Bank of America is paying 0.01% on its standard savings account.
On $10,000 parked for a full year, you'd earn about a dollar — before taxes.
Meanwhile, the bank is lending that same money out at rates many times higher.
It's the standard playbook at most big national banks: Chase, Wells Fargo, and Citi all sit in the same neighborhood on basic savings.
The pitch is convenience — branches, apps, ATMs everywhere.
If you moved that $10,000 into a high-yield savings account paying around 4%, you'd be looking at roughly $400 a year.
It's the going market for federally insured savings at online banks and many credit unions.
The gap between those two numbers — about $399 — is what you're paying for the privilege of keeping your cash at a legacy bank. **Who actually benefits from the low rate** The bank does, plainly.
When you deposit money at 0.01% and the bank earns far more on loans and securities, that spread is the business model.
It's legal, it's disclosed in the fine print, and it's been quietly widening for years.
Depositors who don't check their statements are the ones funding it.
Rate changes at big banks move slowly in both directions.
When the Federal Reserve raised rates in 2022 and 2023, online banks bumped their savings yields within weeks.
Many traditional banks dragged their feet for months, and some never fully caught up.
When the Fed eventually cuts, expect the reverse to happen fast — your 0.01% can't really go lower, but promotional rates elsewhere will shrink. **What to check before you move anything** Not every dollar belongs in a high-yield account.
If you need same-day branch access, cashier's checks, or you're juggling minimum balances to dodge monthly fees, convenience has real value.
Some people keep a small buffer at their regular bank and shift the rest.
Also read the fine print on any online account.
Some high-yield rates are teaser offers that drop after a few months.
Some require minimum deposits or direct deposit.
A few have clunky transfer systems that take two or three business days to move money — annoying, but rarely a dealbreaker for an emergency fund.
The bigger point: loyalty to a bank isn't a financial strategy.
Banks don't reward long-tenured customers with better rates.
If anything, the longest-tenured customers tend to have the worst ones, because they stopped shopping years ago. **The move worth considering** Log into your savings account right now and find the interest rate.
It's usually buried two or three clicks deep, which tells you something.
If it starts with a zero, you're not earning — you're subsidizing.
Moving an emergency fund to a federally insured high-yield account takes about fifteen minutes and can be reversed anytime.
A dollar a year on $10,000 isn't a savings rate.
It's a rounding error dressed up as a product.
Check what you're actually getting, and decide whether the convenience is worth the four hundred bucks.
Final Thoughts
The banks are counting on you never looking.