With lots of banks failing and many more expected to fail, now is a good time to learn how to protect yourself with FDIC insurance. There is a series of very boring but very informative videos on the subject, but the gist is that a married couple can very easily protect up to $400,000 in assets per bank chain by opening two individual accounts and one joint account (checking or savings). Whether or not you should have a giant pile of cash sitting in a bank and not properly invested is another topic entirely.