You might be aware of the fact that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) fairly recently changed its limits on the size of deposits that it will insure. Individuals are now allowed to have a quarter million dollars insured per bank, and married couples may cumulatively have five hundred thousand dollars. This is up from one hundred thousand dollars per individual and two hundred thousand dollars for married couples. This change is said to be to be temporary, but one tenet of the banking industry reform bill currently being considered in Congress would make it a permanent change. Higher deposit limits are great for consumers, because they don’t need to worry aboutteh safety of their assets in the (unlikely) event of a bank crash. But not everyone considers the fact that it’s not just the sum total of one’s checking and savings accounts that one has to worry about: the amounts that you have saved up in money market accounts and certificates of deposit also count towards your grand total.
If you have too much money in CDs, you might have to take a portion of your total investment funds and move it to another bank when your certificate is due to roll over. If it is getting close to that time, it might be a good time for you to start doing some comparison shopping of CD rates at different competing banks in your area. There are various tools on banking sites located on the World Wide Web that can make comparison shopping easy.
Also consider your alternatives: IRA accounts are considered separate depositors from the consumers who open them, so money you put in this type of account doesn’t count towards your limit.
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