This is my voice.
It can tell you a lot about me, and I'm not changing it for anyone.
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Hey, everybody, it's Marielle Seguera.
If you have money in a savings account, I want you to check something.
Log into your account online and you can see how much interest you're making a year.
It'll say, you know, 0.5% apy annual percentage yield.
Now I want you to think about another number, 5%.
That's the inflation rate in the US right now, and it's been higher than that for a while.
The difference between those two percentages, that's how much the money you have in savings is losing value every year.
When we put money in a savings account, we like to think of it as safe, right?
But when inflation is this high, your money isn't safe because its value is eroding a little bit at a time.
Arzu Rezvani covers personal finance and housing for NPR, and she says, there's this inertia that happens with our savings.
I have talked to a lot of people about this, and what happens really is that they started a checking or savings account when they were really young, and then they've never really bothered to check back in to see, oh, what is my savings account making for me?
Also, over the past few years, a lot of us got used to the measly zero point something percent interest rates that our savings accounts were offering because that's just kind of how it was across the board.
But for a number of reasons, there are better options now, better ways to protect your money against inflation.
And look, switching savings accounts might seem annoying.
You're sitting down, taking a look at the various websites, setting up new systems, transferring money.