Next to stuffing your hard earned money under your mattress, your savings account may be the worst place to put your money.

Inflation rises at 3 - 4 percent a year, which means for every $1 you have now, it will only be worth $0.96 next year, and the following year it will only be worth $0.92. That may not seem significant, but over the course of time, the value of your money decreases significantly. According to this inflation calculator, $1 in 1997 only has the buying power of something that costs $1.31 in 2007 dollars. In other words, over the course of 10 years your dollar is only worth $0.79.

Imagine that your $100,000 savings is only worth $79,000 just because it was parked in a simple savings account that paid less than 1 percent interest on your hard earned money.
As someone who is working to increase their net worth, you obviously want to get the highest return for your money. However, the potential rate of return generally comes with risk or tying up your money for a specific amount of time. Of course you can’t lock up all of your money in investments because you need cash on hand to pay your bills and get through life.

Your excess cash, however, should be in an account that at least keeps up with the rate of inflation. Otherwise you are losing money as time goes by. An online high-yield savings account, for instance, gives you the benefit of being able to access your money with an ATM card, while providing a nice yield that will keep up with or exceed inflation rates.

Millionaire Money Habit: Keep only the money you need to get through life in a simple savings or checking account. Put the rest of your savings in an account that will beat inflation rates so you are not losing money by having your cash stashed in a low-yielding account. If you can stand to not touch the money for 10+ years, your best bet may be the stock market. Otherwise seek fixed-income investments, such as a CD, or a high-yield savings account like HSBC.