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Dear Dr. Don,
How do my wife and I structure accounts at one bank to keep more
than $100,000 insured?
-- Scott Saver
Dear Scott,
You can each have $100,000 insured as a depositor with a single
FDIC-insured financial institution. The accounts can be held individually
as single accounts or jointly. Here are some excerpts from the FDIC
guide, Insuring
Your Deposits, about structuring your accounts to maximize the
insurance coverage:
The FDIC insures deposit accounts
such as checking, NOW and savings accounts, money
market deposit accounts and certificates of deposit,
or CDs. The basic insurance limit is $100,000
per depositor per insured bank.
If you or your family has deposits at one insured
bank totaling more than $100,000, you should know that different
ownership categories of accounts are separately insured up to
$100,000. You may qualify for more than $100,000 in coverage at
one insured bank if you own deposit accounts in different ownership
categories.
The most common ownership categories are:
- Single accounts
- Self-directed retirement accounts
- Joint accounts
- Revocable trust accounts
The FDIC Web site also has EDIE,
the Electronic Deposit Insurance Estimator, that will allow you
to input the particulars concerning your deposits and estimate your
insurance coverage.
A new approach to arranging insured deposits with
one bank is CDARS,
which is the acronym for Certificates of Deposit
Account Registry Service. You can deal with just
one bank, but have your money fully FDIC insured
up to $50 million. The Bankrate article, "CDARS: An easy way to beat $100,000 FDIC limit,"
has more information about this approach to insured
deposits.
How safe is your bank? See the Safe
& Sound rating.
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