Bank of America customers holding money in a standard savings account are earning 0.01% APY, according to the bank's published rate schedule.
That means $10,000 parked there for a full year generates about one dollar in interest.
The same $10,000 in a competitive online savings account at roughly 4% APY would earn around $400.
It's the spread between what the Federal Reserve pays banks on reserves and what the biggest consumer banks choose to pass along.
The Fed's benchmark rate has hovered above 4% for months, and money market funds and high-yield savings accounts have tracked it closely.
The four largest US banks, meanwhile, have kept legacy savings rates pinned near zero.
Where that spread shows up is your grocery bill, your rent check, and your credit card statement.
Grocery prices are still climbing faster than the Fed's 2% target, and rent in most metros hasn't cooled much.
Every dollar sitting in a near-zero account is a dollar not offsetting those increases.
The math gets worse when you look at borrowing costs on the same balance sheet.
Bank of America's standard credit card APR runs above 20% for many cardholders.
So the bank may pay you a penny per hundred dollars while charging you roughly 20 cents per hundred on carried debt.
That spread is the business model, not a rounding error.
Deposit rates at big banks tend to move slowly in both directions.
They were slow to rise when the Fed hiked, and analysts expect they'll be slow to fall when the Fed cuts.
That asymmetry is the part consumers tend to notice last.
Switching isn't complicated, but it does take a few steps.
Online banks and money market funds typically require no minimum and no branch visit.
Transfers between institutions usually clear in one to three business days.
The main trade-off is losing in-person service and, in some cases, FDIC coverage limits per institution.
Keep one to two months of expenses in your checking account for bills.
Move the emergency fund to a higher-yield account.
Confirm the institution is FDIC or NCUA insured, and stay under the $250,000 per depositor, per bank limit unless you split across institutions.
Watch for promotional rates that expire after a few months, and check whether an account charges monthly fees that eat the extra yield.
A 4% account with a $10 monthly fee on a $2,000 balance nets less than a 3.5% account with no fee.
None of this is a prediction about where rates go next.
It's arithmetic about where they are now.
Comparing the two takes about five minutes and, for many households, is worth several hundred dollars a year.
The uncomfortable part is that loyalty to a big bank brand has a price tag, and it's printed in the fine print nobody reads at account opening.
Final Thoughts
If your savings rate starts with a zero and a decimal point, you're not being rewarded for staying.