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Did you have more than $250,000 in your account? If so, then you would have lost access to part of your money, or gotten if after a bankruptcy court hearing. Deposits are not the highest priority item on a bank's liability side of the balance sheet, and as a depositor, you'll likely not get paid in full.

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That limit is per account, not per person. If you have more than $250K in an account, open a second one.

Not so. The limit is per depositor, per bank, per ownership category:

https://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/

Ownership category is just something like single, joint, retirement, etc. If you have more than $250,000 spread across multiple accounts but with the same account holder and ownership category, the excess is not covered.

Right, but easy enough to select a second bank.

Let's also make a note that people with $250k+ in cash savings are a tiny group that should have no really bearing on whether cash is trustworthy.

Totally agreed, I just didn't want any clueless HNers with lots of cash lying around trying to open a second account to secure their money on the basis of that comment.

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