Guides
Banking Guides: Savings, Checking and Keeping Your Money Safe
Compare savings and checking accounts, understand FDIC insurance, avoid common bank fees and learn how to protect your accounts from fraud.
Where you keep your everyday money matters more than many people think. The right accounts can earn meaningful interest on your savings, cost you little or nothing in fees and keep your deposits protected. The wrong ones can quietly drain money through monthly charges, overdraft fees and low rates.
This section explains how checking, savings, money market accounts and certificates of deposit work, and how to compare them on rates, fees and access. We cover how FDIC and NCUA deposit insurance protect your money and where the limits are, how to build an emergency fund, and how online banks and credit unions compare with traditional banks.
We also cover protecting your accounts from scams and identity theft, including what to do if money is taken from your account without permission. We use primary sources such as the FDIC, the Federal Reserve and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau for rules and protections, and we date any rates or figures we mention.
Guides in Banking
The first guides in this section are being written and fact-checked now. Until they publish, these are good places to start:
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