With the fancy yachts of the financial world in trouble, should you worry about your community dinghy — er, bank? In a word: No. It may be scary, but don't jump ship!

Your stashed cash is probably safe.

A wonderful aspect of the banking industry (and this goes for credit unions too) is that if a bank is insured by the FDIC (or NCUA for credit unions) then customer assets are protected by the U.S government. You can find out if your bank is insured at this site.

If you've trusted your money with an insured company, you have no reason to run despite some bad news. Of course, there are a few stipulations on how much money is insured per type of account. Our nice friends at Schwab provided us with a chart:

Still nervous? Check out Dave Kansas' article about what to do in this crisis and Brett Arends' piece on 10 ways to protect your portfolio. Or, talk to our financial planning guru Mike. But don't bury your cash in your backyard — that's truly a sunken investment.

--Susie Bafico