Bank of America customers holding cash in a standard savings account are earning 0.01% APY right now — a number that hasn't budged through two years of Federal Reserve rate drama.
On a $10,000 balance, that's about one dollar a year.
Meanwhile, the same bank charges roughly 20% interest on credit card balances.
That gap is the quiet engine behind a lot of household frustration.
The Fed's benchmark rate sat above 5% for much of 2023 and 2024, and online banks passed that along.
It's not a glitch — it's a business model.
Big banks with millions of checking customers don't need to compete on deposit rates because switching feels like a hassle.
Where the money actually went: high-yield savings accounts from online-only banks have been paying in the 4% to 5% range over the past two years, though those yields are already sliding as the Fed signals cuts.
Treasury bills and money market funds offered similar returns.
A saver who moved $20,000 from a 0.01% account to a 4.5% one earned roughly $900 more in a single year.
The grocery aisle is where this compounds.
Food prices are still climbing faster than the official inflation target, rent keeps eating a bigger share of paychecks, and credit card delinquencies have been rising, especially among younger borrowers.
Every dollar parked at 0.01% is a dollar not offsetting those increases.
It doesn't feel like a loss because nothing visibly disappears — it just never shows up.
BofA does offer higher-yield options, including promotional rates on some savings tiers and certificates of deposit that pay meaningfully more than the base account.
The catch is that you usually have to ask, or already hold a certain balance.
Customers who never log in and check stay in the default account indefinitely.
If you're deciding what to do, the practical checklist is short.
Find your current APY — it's on your statement or in the app, usually buried.
Compare it to what a federally insured online account pays today.
Then weigh the friction: moving money takes a few minutes, and deposits stay insured up to $250,000 per depositor, per institution, at any FDIC-insured bank.
One caveat worth repeating as rate cuts approach: yields on high-yield accounts will fall too, just from a much higher starting point.
Locking a portion into a CD can protect a rate for a set term if you won't need the cash.
Leave an emergency fund liquid regardless.
The larger point is that loyalty to a big bank's base savings account is expensive, and it's getting more expensive as everyday costs keep outpacing wage growth.
Final Thoughts
Nobody is going to email you about the money you're not earning.