If you want to keep the money that you have worked for over the long term, your checking and savings account are not going to cut it.
Money losing value gradually — Demurrage — makes people actually spend money rather than hoard it. If you want the money to earn interest, you will have to take some risk. Invest in some assets. Usually, stocks or real estate or (finally thanks to the JOBS act) new startups.
I don’t know why people have “fat bank accounts”. Money isn’t meant to be stored. That’s a racket by the banks, along with the idea that you have to buy a home instead of renting. If you can rent and buy other assets that you understand better than real estate, then do that.
This is not magic .. money has to come from somewhere. It usually comes from banks themselves — who lend it to people and businesses who believe that they can pay back MORE money ! The only way everyone can pay back more money than is in existence is if the money supply is increased in the meantime. So inflation happens. The only alternative is having lots of people default and restructure their loans to owe less. This is what Ray Dalio says can be “a beautiful deleveraging”. I don’t buy it…
Learn how it all works:
or the lent money is used to produce more goods and services, which the increased money supply would represent (otherwise, you'd get deflation, which discourages spending, and spiral downwards towards depression).
OP is saying the nominal value persists.
With banking, people care about nominal value.