Q: What about me? What can I do to protect my money in the bank?

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I was just reading a Yahoo News article about why, supposedly, if the economy is beginning to recovery, why are banks still failing. basically all they said was cause banks did such bad loans to construction and buliding industries that they now can't pay back those bad loans, and since neither of those industries are generating any business now...that is why they are failing. I notice they "blame" it all on the borrowers... never the lender! It was the lender that offered the bad loan, granted the borrower didn't have to accept, but still they always blame it on the borrowers. Like with student Credit cards... come on that student is in school all day, studying all night.. low paying jobs at best, yet the credit cards litterally bombarded schools with low low rates to students... what part of "they can't afford it so why do you offer it?" don't they understand?! Anyway, off my soap box... .The part of this article that caught my eye was the "What about me? What can I do to protect my money in the bank?" that talks about personal accounts being insured with FDIC for up to $250,000. While the only thing I have in common with a money figure like that is that I can pronounce it correctly... I did take a look. Granted you could just ask your bank, but sometimes, with all of them failing and being taken over and so many things changing within them (like Chase taking WAMU - boy things have changed on the credit card side..) I doubt any bank is going to tell you if they are in trouble or not. I doubt seriously if you ask..."is this bank in danger or failing within the next 6-12 months?".. that they will say "unfortunately, yes.. we are currently having some problems and it doesn't appear we will be able to get out from under them any time soon". So I always just ask questions in several places. Here's the paragraph and the link they offer to help you know if your bank and your money is FDIC insurred. I know I am WAY below that insured figure, but was mainly just checking on my banks FDIC status. Check it out and see if it helps you. *********************** Q: What about me? What can I do to protect my money in the bank? A: Accounts are insured by the FDIC up to $250,000 per depositor per bank. Joint accounts are insured up to that amount for each co-owner of the account; individual retirement accounts, or IRAs, held in banks are also insured. If you have multiple individual accounts at one bank, it's important to structure them carefully so they don't exceed the limits. The FDIC has a calculator on its Web site called the electronic deposit insurance estimator, or EDIE, that can help determine how much money in deposit accounts, if any, exceeds the insurance limits. You can find it here: http://tinyurl.com/lt3aok. For any money in a failed bank's deposit accounts that exceeds the insured limits, you become essentially a creditor of the bank. You would eventually recover some of your money, but the amount can range from 40 cents on the dollar up to the full amount. Recovery of the money could take months.