Why not? It takes maybe a week to set up? And most of that week would be waiting for a funds transfer. It costs $0 to open and you get atm fee reimbursement and no international transaction fees. I get that people are busy but if you’re unhappy about something and you can change it, then why not carve out time to do so. People have plenty of time to seek new employment, this is just as critical.
You’re just raging at people at this point. Most people don’t optimize their finances to that extent. Sorry. An extra $50 a year (in the most optimistic case) is not going to protect anyone against inflation, as you were originally suggesting.
How am I raging? I’m passively telling people ways to better their lives. They can choose to use the info or not. You are the one raging against the idea of a better world with happier people. An extra $50 certainly does help people living paycheck to paycheck. The point of my commentary is that people should be optimizing their finances more and we should be discussing options publicly. Your insistence that it’s futile is mind bogglingly stupid.
It's not futile to try to get interest on a tiny bank balance and I explicitly said that it's not futile. (I said that the hypothetical $50 was 'worth having'.) The thing is that
people on low wages already have to think about money all the time. They will be reluctant to spend even more time thinking about it unless there's likely to be a big payoff. I think you are vastly overestimating how much money a typical American has lying around that has the potential to collect interest.
Also, the current interest rate on a Fidelity cash management account appears to be around 2.2%, not 5%.
Well then you would appear to be wrong because buying SGOV, and FDLXX (cash equivalent bonds that track tbills) will give you closer to 5.0% (creating a high yield checking account for daily use). What you are quoting is an APY on a deposit sweep. There are clearly two options to get any % back.[0]
Even if you foolish choose the 2.2% option you would still yield more return on your money than a bank checking account which probably gives you less than 0.01% return.
You can optimize further by cutting Fidelity out of the equation and purchase Tbills on treasurydirect.gov straight from the government creating a high yield savings account with monthly yield.
Even better, Tbills are tax-free at the state and local level.
