What is FDIC insurance?

FDIC stands for Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. It's a U.S. government agency that protects your money if a bank goes under. Every account at an FDIC-insured bank is covered up to $250,000 per depositor, per bank.

In practice, this means you never have to worry about losing the money sitting in a legitimate bank account. If the bank fails, the FDIC steps in and makes sure you get your money back up to that limit. It has worked this way since 1933 and has never failed to pay out.

For the accounts on this site, FDIC insurance is mostly a background detail. You're not leaving huge sums parked there for years. But it's worth understanding because it's the reason a bank account is fundamentally safer than an investment account. Your deposits are protected by the government. Your investments are not.

When you're opening new accounts for bonuses, you can verify that a bank is FDIC-insured by looking for the FDIC logo on their website or checking fdic.gov. Almost every legitimate bank in the U.S. is covered.