I would say that you are just about as personally invested in caring about the struggles of you financial institution a they would be in yours.

Really, if you suffered a catasrophic event (say, a major illness) that brought about your financial ruin would they be wringing their hands over you?

Before Washington Mutual goes belly-up.

Eventually banks that have no money have no resources or inclination to bother to operate very well. Eventually they start to make stupid mistakes which take forever or never to get fixed. Eventually everyone you talk to to straighten those problems out, are in India with limited command of English and no authority to fix anything. And since their management chain is stressed too thin, they can't fix anything either. Until the whole mess is sold off to some Honk Kong bank or Saudi speculators who have less than zero interest or knowledge about retail banking.

Sounds like a plan to me.

I don't think anyone has 'warm fuzzies' for any major corporation anymore - they are just collections of merged acronyms. Banks, especially. My mortgage is with Washington Mutual. Perhaps if they collapse, they'll lose my loan information and I won't have to pay!

I don't think you want to go through the process of dealing with the FDIC. I agree, pull your accounts. Serves them right.

I bank at Suntrust (another stupid, generic corporate name), which bought out Crestar a few years back. But I only banked with Crestar because that's where my mom banked and where I opened an account as a teenager. I almost switched last year after Suntrust tried to charge me some BS fees, but like you, I was too lazy to bother once they sorted it out. I almost went to PNC, which opened a branch that was very convenient to me, but that is now something else entirely.

I'm actually struggling to think of ANY company I use regularly whose demise would bother me in any real way, other than the inconvenience. Nope...nothing.

...did you know it can take the FDIC up to 8 months to pay out? Can you afford to be without your savings for 8 months? Probably a good idea to start scattering your assets, just in case you might actually need your money for something.

WAMU held my last mortgage, and they were the best deal at the time. And, service was generally horrible and their escrow department stole money from us on a regular basis (projecting increases in future insurance and tax costs far beyond reality).

Seeing the coming debacle, I didn't even call WAMU this time, nor did I do the competitive bid-out. I went with Bank of America, which is marginally more stable than most companies these days. With, of course, horrible service and a f-u attitude towards their customers.

Other than keeping our money under the bed, what else can we do?

It is perhaps because they are such an awful awful institution that you, and I, and in all probability MANY others of our ilk feel no compassion towards this flailing behemoth of a bank. Any evidence I could give of their failings would come off as a rant, so I will simply point to their 'D' rating by the Better Business Bureau and dance the karma dance.

If you want more of a connection to your financial institution, join a credit union and own your own bank!

I started banking with B of A back when it was a California-based bank. Now, I don't know what it is, but I do know that they used a Visa card I had with them as an excuse to run constant, monthly credit checks on me - an attempt, I assume, to find an opportunity to raise my interest rate.

I say we all pull our money out and join Credit Unions. Most of these big banks aren't interested in consumer accounts anyway.

I used to bank at WaMu. Though I, also, never asked for it. I started out at Bank of America (ack!), and switched to Home Savings. They had beautiful branches throughout southern California (did you know bank buildings could be beautiful?). They had a bank in our neighborhood. And the people actually remembered me when I went in. We didn't have much money in those days (mid-nineties, just out of college), and it was really refreshing to be treated like a person at a bank.

Of course that couldn't last, and WaMu gobbled them up just like all the others. But they promised to keep the terms of our old account (including not charging us for using other banks' ATMs). The service was terrible -- they repeatedly failed to setup a direct debit for a car loan we got from them. The fees and hassle got worse and worse. I moved to a different part of the country with no WaMu branches nearby, and so I finally switched to another bank -- just another behemoth, but at least with local branches, and friendly-enough staff at our branch.

I think it's been a long time since most people gave a damn what happened to financial companies, even the ones they depend on. They can only dehumanize people for so long before it comes back to bite them.

I don't have a bank account at WaMu, but they have my credit card.

Wonder what happens if they go belly up? Do I still have to pay off the balance? I'm assume if they go bankrupt, they'll sell off the receivables to someone else, so no.

I've been diligently paying it down for the last two years, so I don't really owe that much more. Although, I have a high credit limit with them, that I'll be disappointed to lose.

I agree with a previous poster - have you considered joining a local credit union? I do all my banking with one, including my last mortgage. Note that they keep all of the mortgages that they sell, instead of trading them off like most commercial banks. In addition, because I've done most of my major loans with them over the past decade or more, they know (and seem to care) about my good repayment history with them when I apply for new credit.

Regards,

John