Matthew Goldberg, banking analyst at Bankrate.com, joined Cheddar News to explain what steps you should take to ensure your cash is safe with your financial institution.

Closing Bell

Top Banking Tips to Know in Wake of SVB's Collapse

Well as the failures of Silicon Valley Bank and signature bank continue to create ripple effects throughout our economy and lead to a lot of questions, Major rating service, Moody's cutting its view on the entire banking system from stable to negative and all of this might leave you with feelings of uncertainty rightfully. So including wondering about the health of your own bank and your own money. So joining me now is Matthew Goldberg banking analyst at bankrate dot com. Matthew, great to have you on the show. Look many people worried about their own funds and banks right now, let alone the stock market or any other place that they keep their money. What should they know about the risks? Thanks for having me, Kristen. Um um Basically, I mean, there's no reason to panic. What you should be doing is confirming right now that you're at an F D I C insured bank that your deposits are there. And one way that you can do that is through the F D I C S bank. Find sweet. So you can go there, you can type in the name of your bank and you can search sometimes via the website of the bank and that way, no matter what bank you're at, whether it's online or the brick and mortar down the street, you want to make sure you're at an F D I C insured banks. That's step one. What's step two? Because a lot of people did have more money than the F D I C insured threshold that we saw in the wake of these two bank collapses at some of these banks. Yeah, you want to make sure that you understand the F D I C insurance limits and guidelines. And so again, you might want to bookmark the F D I C dot gov, the F D I C dot gov, because I'm gonna send you to Edie, it's the electronic deposit insurance estimator and that way you can kind of, it's a really great calculator. You can fill in um your deposits, um your different accounts at a certain bank and then you can kind of see if you are indeed within the limits and following the F D I C rules. One thing is that this is um you're inputting your own information. So if you're wrong, you might come back with an incorrect um message there. So F D I C dot gov also has a phone number. Now, Edie, is that what you said? That's where you would type in the information. Can you just spell that out for us? So viewers following along at home can make sure they go to the right place e electronic deposit insurance estimator but start out F D I C that will get you everywhere. Okay. Very good to know. Now, Matthew would you recommend in the wake of the uncertainty out there that people perhaps do diversify their deposits at different banks instead of keeping them in one single bank. It doesn't have anything to do with this really. But I think um multiple bank accounts now like like to don't go, you don't have to go extreme and have many, many bank accounts. I think about two bank accounts is good. Um, say online there's an online bank outage and those are pretty rare. But let's say that happens at bank A. Well, you've got bank B then and you have some funds in there but make sure if you have more than one bank account, you're not getting fees at any of these because that can be, you know, those should be avoidable in this day and age and those fees can be costly. Alright. Matthew Goldberg, banking analyst at bankrate dot com. Matthew, so many important questions answered. We appreciate it.