I kept $30,000 sitting in a regular savings account at 0.01% APY for almost three years before I learned what a HYSA was. Here's the cost of that ignorance.

At 0.01%: $3/year in interest on $30,000. At 4.5% (what HYSAs were paying at peak): $1,350/year. Over three years, I left roughly $4,000 in interest sitting on the table. That's real money.

The good news: switching to a HYSA takes about 20 minutes and your money is FDIC insured the same as any bank. There is no meaningful downside for cash you'd keep in a savings account anyway.

This is the kind of optimization that costs no effort, takes almost no time, and produces guaranteed real returns. I genuinely wish someone had told me this earlier.