Credit unions are stable and reputable institutions, and it's a perfectly sane thing to do. You'll also get a better night's sleep if your mattress isn't all lumpy and stuffed with bills. However, your money is insured up to $100,000 per bank per person, excluding joint accounts. This is to say that you and Cattitude could each have $100,000 in savings, for instance, and you can still have a joint checking account at the same bank. You can also each have $250,000 in retirement accounts at the same bank, and you're good. Of course, if you have that much money, there might be better things to do with it that are still relatively safe.
It's insured by a gov't agency, the FDIC. If that fails, I think we'll have larger problems (of the "fleeing over the border in the night" sort). My bank failed/was taken over last week and I haven't had any problems accessing my money, despite my fears of same. (I am moving things to my union's credit union, though.)
I'm not talking AIG, but the FDIC, which was created in 1933 to prevent the bank failures of the great depression from ever happening again. It's true that it could fail, too, but if it got to that point, I think we'd be looking at a total failure of the government, and currency wouldn't be good, either. Of course, diamonds and gold have always been portable and easily convertible wealth, and if I worried about the FDIC, that's where I'd want my money.
If I were thinking in those terms, gold. Diamonds are propped up by a cartel and its ad campaigns, meaning they're not saleable for anything close to what you pay for them, and that value may not hold out much longer against cheap synthetics.
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Insured is lovely as long as the insurers don't fail too.
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