Suze Orman, Oprah, You, Me - we're all in bed with the FDIC.

And that's because the sexy FDIC covers a lot of our money :) I tried to avoid bringing it up since it's been covered a good 3,000,300,40405,490u002945 times already in the media, but sadly i'm just plum out of ideas to blog about today.

And the truth of the matter is, the FDIC does in fact play a major role these days. So today i go trendy. Plus, not *everyone* knows about it either, so this one's for you! (for all others sick of hearing about it, take a look at the pretty pictures over on google, or the latest Chuck Norris facts.)

I'd like to start off by sharing a little email i got from the Mrs. this week on it all, and then i'll get to why, exactly, the FDIC is important in our financial lives:

"suze orman is on oprah today...she was adamantly saying about how to protect your money during the impending recession. she said that everyone should go to myfdicinsurance.gov to answer a few questions and see if their money is insured by the government.

if your bank IS FDIC insured, then she says you have nothing to worry about because the govt is backing up your funds if anything should go wrong. if your bank is NOT FDIC insured, she said you should be getting your money out TODAY into an account that is FDIC insured."

Nicely done, Mrs. Budgetsaresexy! I'm proud to say that I've got her piped into the financial world more and more so lately. She's no nerd about it like i am, but she sure is getting closer ;) And i'm sure Oprah had nothing to do with it either...HA! I bet she'd watch anything on there, but i digress...

Her email basically sums up the gist of how important the FDIC is though, especially in the impending death of our Financial World that's apparently going on these days (i don't buy it though). Okay great, so what the F do they do?

They insure up to $100,000 $250,000 beautiful dollars of yours! (Updated due to the bailout plan!)They cover a whole bunch of checking and savings accounts, along with cds, and most money markets. You can also be sneaky and stash $100k $250k at two separate banks (not branches) and then even have $200k $500k insured! What they DON'T cover is stocks, mutual funds, etc, but you can read more on the FDIC site, or on Wiki.

So if your WaMu, PNC, Bank of America, or the hundreds of other banks that are FDIC insured goes under, you don't lose a penny. In fact, since it started out 80 years ago, no one has ever lost any money - so that's always good. Most of the banks that i know of ARE insured under them, but i'm guessing there are hundreds that aren't. So as the Queen of Finance herself stated, if your bank ain't insured, get it out and drop it into a safer one!

And now, i shall get back to my day job...which i've been severely slacking on today. (luv you blog!)

Labels: advice, insurance, money management, suze orman