Today we’re going to talk about a government agency you’ve probably never thought about much before: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation. But first, a little family history.

My grandparents went through it.

My grandmother endured a childhood in fascist Italy during World War II. At 12, she passed Nazi soldiers carrying supplies for the Italian resistance in her bike basket. She nearly starved on a diet of yogurt, carrots, and eggs, and she saw her neighbors murdered in the street.

When she grew up she met an American soldier on leave in Rome—my grandfather. He was a light-skinned mixed race man who grew up poor in the deep South. When he was 18, his teeth were kicked out in a fight when his black school’s football team beat the white school. After the army, he chose to pass as white for the rest of his life.

So you can see why these two were exceedingly cautious about most things. Their lived experiences didn’t exactly breed trust in the wider world!

Even so, they were convinced to invest in the stock market in the 1960s… without fully understanding it. The first time the market hit a major downturn, they watched their investments plummet, panicked, and pulled what was left of their money out of the market. Nonna and Papi swore off investing forever after that.

Instead, they put all of their money in an FDIC-insured bank account. When that account reached the maximum insured amount… they opened another account at another bank. And another. And another.

By the time my grandfather died at age 94, they had saved over a million dollars, scattered across multiple banks. It was a massive headache for my dad and his siblings to run around finding, consolidating, and organizing the accounts to secure elder care for my grandmother.

This little family fable holds an important lesson about money management. So today we’re going to discuss what my darling grandparents got wrong about the FDIC, what they could’ve done differently, and why I don’t blame them at all for the choices they made. Andiamo!