I am taking ALL my money out the bank.

[Brundle_Fly]

discuss.

[BlooInBloo]

1. Rock on. It's stupid, but it's your money.

[rateyes]

2. Where you going to cash your paychecks? nt

[iiibbb]

3. Whatever floats your boat.

Just don't sell your stock.

[MorningGlow]

4. I don't have any money IN the bank

"When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose."

[Blondiegrrl]

13. Ha! Same here.

For the first time, being dirt-poor feels rather liberating.

[stillcool]

31. It's very freeing isn't it?

We lost all our possessions in a flood a couple years ago. Don't miss a thing. Seems like everything I own I just rent anyway. Half of it ends up being donated for someone else to rent for a while.

[dkf]

5. Cash in the mattress?

[Historic NY]

6. Credit Union might be better choice.

I actually thought about shifting my accounts to my credit union

[MercutioATC]

10. Credit Unions are esentially the same as banks in most ways, but I like the "ownership" thing.

Plus, I love my credit union.

[BlooInBloo]

22. "essentially", "in most ways"...

I suppose with enough qualifiers of that sort, I'll go along.

But does your bank put out statements like this?

http://www.becu.org/default.asp?pid=whatsnewdetail&ID=1090

"BECU Remains Financially Strong
posted Sep 16, 2008

As we approach the final months of 2008, we want to thank our members for their continued confidence in BECU. Current market events such as the recent conservatorship by the Federal Government of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the nation’s top mortgage backers, along with the latest announcements on Wall Street of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the acquisition of Merrill Lynch have many of you asking questions about what, if any, impact this has one BECU. Despite the current climate, I want to reassure you that BECU remains very liquid, and our financial position continues to be strong. As one of our more than 576,000 members, you can rest assured that your money and financial services are in a very safe and very healthy credit union. And, thanks to your trust in us, we continue to grow and serve even more Washington State residents.

With these ongoing mortgage concerns and the rippling market impact, we want to provide some information to help you sort through what’s going on, and reassure you that your membership and financial services with us remain stable and safe.

For those of you not familiar with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, these institutions were created by Congress to provide liquidity in the mortgage market, i.e. funds that allow financial institutions to provide more loans. The term "conforming loan" refers to a mortgage eligible for sale to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

This past weekend Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy protection, and Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America. Although both of these organizations are two of the largest investment banking firms in the world, their troubles stem from investments in subprime mortgages (higher risk loans made to individuals who do not qualify for conventional, prime rate loans) and because of this, an inability to raise capital. Neither of these events has an impact on BECU since we only invest in high quality securities and have no exposure to their investment challenges."

[MercutioATC]

27. Wel, there are a lot of technical differences, but not many that really matter to the depositor.

That said, mine's a small credit union. When I joined it 17 years ago, it only served employees of the one air traffic control facility where I work. Now, it's chartered to provide services in the entire county (about 302k people) and has four branches.

They currently hold my mortgage (they don't sell them) and they've financed three cars and a home equity loan for me. Good rates and they're small enough that I know all of the people.

[rzemanfl]

7. Can't. Not legal. They can rob us, but we can't talk about

taking money out of banks. So if I take my money out of S** T**** I ain't saying nuthin'.

[ecstatic]

8. I suppose I will once I surpass 200K. Or is that foolish of me

to have faith in the FDIC? :shrug:

[MercutioATC]

11. Well, since the FDIC only insures up to $100k, yes, it's foolish.

Otherwise, not at all.

[redirish28]

9. I am with you. My wife and I are talking about taking the money she

has from an old company she no longer works for and only has 500 in it out of the stock market type 401 A plan and using that money to stock up much needed items and maybe buying gold.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

12. Are paper dollars going to be worth anything?

That's what's of great concern to me. I keep hearing experts predicting that the dollar could fall to even greater lows. If I take my money out and keep it in a money belt, for example, will it be worth anything? I don't know and I'm not very sophisticated when it comes to the economy. Is there any guarantee that cash will be the answer?

[goldcanyonaz]

14. It's really foolish to do this, even if you have over 100k you just use different banks.

If you get ripped off or have a fire you are screwed. FDIC insures up to 100k per account, but I can not understand anyone having that type of money in the bank, rather than bonds.

[abumbyanyothername]

15. Use it to buy land, or other hard, nondepreciating assets.

Or assets that have a very long depreciation life (farms, apartment buildings, transportation systems, energy production systems, water systems, etc.).

Hold nothing in paper.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-9050474362583451279

[liberalmuse]

20. Absolutely!

The dollar will soon become pretty much useless, if the rumors are correct.

[medicswife]

16. My Dad has been buying gold and silver for years now

I remember seeing bags of silver dollars and half dollars in his fire proof safe when I was a little kid. Always thought it was kind of crazy. Doesn't seem so much so anymore.

[Doremus]

17. Hubby & I have been wrestling with this question for several months.

We want to get our retirement fund out of the stock fund it's in but where to put it?

We're watching it evaporate for want of a safe alternative. :(

[shireen]

18. keep it in an FDIC-insured account

if you bring it home and your house burns down, you lose your money.

if you keep it in the bank and despite the FDIC insurance, the dollar loses value to nothingness, we all lose our money.

Not much of a choice, but which do you prefer?

[Lerrad]

26. Correct...

We will all lose it, and there is not much we can do.
Gold and Silver are the best choices.

When the bottom drops out, and it will happen, the US$ wont be worth anything at all. There will be a new currency.

Every time a US$ leaves the country, gold is leaving the country, which is what the $ is based on. And who owns all the gold in the world?

CHINA!

[beachmom]

19. Ever heard of the FDIC? nt

[renie408]

21. Conveniently, I have no money. So this is something I don't have to worry about. n/t

[yodoobo]

23. Your money is still at risk

If you have less than $100,000 removing your money from the bank doesn't really change anything.

For folks with less than 100k, the biggest risk to your money is that inflation will make it essentially worthless. thats not an insignificant risk.

Heres why:

If you have less than 100k, your money is fully insured with FDIC, If you bank fails, you don't lose a nickle. This happened to me last year when Netbank failed. All I lost was online balance information for a few weeks.

Now there IS the risk, that so many banks will fail, that the FDIC will be unable to pay out. If that happens, the Fed government will be printing money like mad to fully fund the FDIC.

In that scenario, inflation will be out of control.

Hyper-inflation. Like those third world countries where it takes $100k to buy a cartload of groceries.

[A-Schwarzenegger]

24. In CANADA?

[WeDidIt]

25. IF everybody started doing that, FDIC would go broke

and would only be able to cover about 5% of all insured deposits, too.

FDIC is convering bout a trillion dollars in assets with about $50 billion in funds.

[depakid]

28. You are an asshole

discuss.

[kurt_cagle]

29. Stop being so naive .. the FDIC is toast.

Think, people! When you set up a bank account, does this mean that the bank has to set up a bank account too and put in matching funds to insure your account as part of the FDIC? No, of course not. The FDIC program is an insurance program - it has a certain amount of money on hand (likely less than $1000 per account, more or less), but when a bank goes under, the FDIC gets the money to insure the funds of the bank by borrowing it from other banks - in essence, taking it from the banks reserves (which is one of the reasons that banks were forced to maintain that fractional reserve of 10%). When you get one or two banks go under, this works pretty well; when hundreds of banks go under, however, what ends up happening is that there is no money to borrow - removing any more of the reserve from a bank will force it to call in loans as well, with the probability of systemic failure. Of course, in the last ten years, banks have been systematically reducing the reserves that they have to carry, in some cases well below the 10% mark. What this means is that for perhaps the first couple of dozen banks to go under, your deposits are insured, but after that, well, you're on your own.

600 banks failed during the S&L crisis in the 1980s, and Congress has to pour in $350 billion dollars in order to recapitalize it. The economy's a helluva lot bigger today, and we've already committed anywhere between $500 billion and several trillion dollars ... and the banks haven't even BEGUN to fail yet. I'm seeing numbers now of anywhere between 3000 and 6000 banks failing in the next three years.

Best course of action - diversify. Gold, silver, currencies (Canadian Loonie, Japanese Yen, the Brazilian Real are all good candidates right now, stay away from the Peso, the British Pound, rather indifferent on the Euro), keep a couple of bank accounts open in different banks that hold enough for you to live on for a month if the other one gets seized.

[CreekDog]

32. oh and where are you going to put all that gold?

garage? pay for it to be kept somewhere? it ain't free to keep, and it ain't earning interest when you keep it. gold is freaking speculation, period. it's speculation that our currency will be an even worse investment than gold is.

you may not think a bank is safe for your money, but that doesn't mean that gold is safer.

my grandfather was a commodities trader in the 60's, 70's and 80's. made a fortune in the 70's, silver and gold, lost everything except his modest house, in the early 80's.

you want to sink all your money into precious metals and pat yourself on the back that it's safer? nice try. after some of the highest inflation we'd seen in years, my grandfather lost everything based on gold and silver.

this is just annoying. no, nothing is absolutely bulletproof, but the so called alternatives may not be any safer and that's the part you are leaving out.

the thing that makes me maddest is that people proclaim precious metals to be the safest thing (to people that might not know better) when in fact it's frought with risk --but while you rail on about how unsafe banks are, that you can't rely on the FDIC, you talk about other things as if they are a better and safer bet and you leave out all the risks of the alternatives, while spouting the risks of banks. it's misleading. you don't freaking know that, you don't mention how frought with risk they are too. people might be following your advice, which makes your unbalanced advice even worse.

:banghead: :rant:

[iiibbb]

34. In 1933 the gov't outlawed public possession of gold.

http://www.wellsfargonevadagold.com/exec-order.html... so unless you own pre-1933 coinage...

The US coinage has a very specific metallurgy so it can be traced.

good luck.

[elkston]

30. Don't talk about making a run on a bank. It is irresponsible. (eom)

[jillan]

33. Why? Your money is insured up to 100k.

You don't need to do this.

[AlCzervik]

35. i'm buying coffee can and mattress futures, they're going places!