Thank you for sharing what must be a somewhat gut-wrenching experience! The treasury direct idea is a great one - there are no commissions of course, and they recently lowered the minimums required to open an account. The correct address has a .gov ending, http://www.treasurydirect.gov ; I opened one years ago and didn’t really do much with it, but I did buy a one-year T-bill. I still have the account open, and they are currently in the process of mailing out information that adds yet another layer of security through some kind of continous login site verification.
Incidentally, while I have never found my TreasuryDirect account information in my credit history file I think it might help ones FICO score? Can’t hurt anyway, and costs nothing to open. Another avenue for better heeled depositors is to look into a CDARS, at http://www.cdars.com in this way each depositor is protected up to $50,000,000 although the rates might not be the highest.
Which leads me to my next question - the lines of people stretching around the bank - my deduction is they are people who had more than the 100k FDIC limit in their accounts? Some have said they “knew” they were covered, but wanted to make sure, etc.
Thanks for sharing your experience with Treasury Direct. Now that you mention it there was a big deal about security. That’s why I opened an account with HSBC [which is great to work with BTW] ... I am only keeping money in there I’m “playing with” not my regular funds.
I work in the market as an equities trade and I just didn’t want to increase my exposure in the market and decided to get into time deposits. What I am learning too is that so many bank personnel give out wrong information. Really wrong so it’s best to inform oneself not rely on them.
I was in a bank last week and the girl told me that I was insured to $100,000 in my checking, up to $100,000 in savings and up to $100,000 for each CD. That is simply wrong and some people may unwittingly put over the amount in a bank due to wrong info.
BTW, I’ll check out those CDARS.
Sounds like you invest. :)