Bank of America customers are earning 0.01% on their standard savings accounts.
On $10,000 parked in that account for a full year, you'd earn about a dollar.
Meanwhile, the national average for a high-yield savings account has hovered between 4% and 5% for much of the past two years, depending on the Fed's latest moves.
It's real money leaving your pocket every month.
Move that same $10,000 into a high-yield account paying 4.25%, and you're looking at roughly $425 a year.
Leave it at Bank of America, and you get $1.
That's a $424 difference for doing almost nothing differently.
Scale it up to $30,000 in emergency savings and you're talking about more than $1,200 a year in foregone interest.
So why do millions of Americans keep their cash there?
Big banks count on that inertia, and it works.
Bank of America holds hundreds of billions in consumer deposits, much of it sitting in accounts paying next to nothing.
The bank does offer better options, but you have to hunt for them.
Its Rewards Savings account pays more if you're in the Preferred Rewards program, which requires qualifying balances across your accounts, often starting at $20,000.
Even then, the top tier rates tend to trail what online banks offer.
Merrill Edge, owned by Bank of America, has a separate cash management option, but again, there are hoops.
The playbook for fixing this doesn't require closing your checking account.
You can keep Bank of America for direct deposit, bill pay, and ATM access, and still move your savings elsewhere.
Online banks like Marcus, Ally, Discover, and Synchrony consistently pay well above the national average, and most have no monthly fees or minimums.
Transfers between banks typically take one to three business days, so it's not instant, but for money you're not touching weekly, that's fine.
Read the fine print on promotional rates, since some are teaser offers that drop after a few months.
And keep at least one month of expenses at your primary bank if you like the comfort of instant access.
One more note: the Fed's rate path matters here.
When the central bank cuts rates, high-yield savings rates drift down too.
The spread between big-bank savings and online savings tends to stay wide in both directions.
If you've been meaning to look at this for a while, a 20-minute call or app session could be the highest-paid half hour of your month.
If it starts with a zero and a decimal point, you already know what to do.
The uncomfortable truth is that loyalty to a big bank is a one-way street.
They're not paying you for it, and they're not going to start.
Final Thoughts
Your savings account should be working as hard as you do, and right now, at 0.01%, it's barely showing up to the job.