While bank failures are rare, with the recent headlines about the failure of IndyMac, you may be wondering how safe your money is.

First, remember that the FDIC insures your deposits at banks up to $100,000 for individual accounts and up to $250,000 for most types of retirement accounts.

These limits are applied per owner, not per account.  So you can have up to $100,000 at a bank - even if it’s in multiple accounts - and still be insured.  But if you have a $75,000 CD, a $25,000 individual savings account, and a $50,000 joint savings account, you are still only insured up to $100,000, even though it is spread out over several accounts.

If you have less than $100,000 in your account, at a bank that is FDIC insured, then you have nothing to worry about.  If you have more than $100,000 in savings, you may want to spread your savings out over two or more banks to make sure your savings are insured.

The FDIC does not insure money invested in stocks, mutual funds, or other investments.

For more information please see How safe is your money, and how to protect it.

In my Living Debt Free ebook, I suggest that readers visualize their goals to help them stay motivated on their journey to getting out of debt.

Joan Sotkin of Prosperity Place takes this a step further, and says visualizing with feelings is a more powerful way to change your money thoughts and will help you achieve your goals faster.

For more about visualizing your goals, check out Prosperity Quick Tip: Visualizing with Feelings.

…why not ask “how can I afford that”?

While browsing the The Carnival of 20-Somethings Finance, I saw a post called Tori Spelling - Unsung Financial Hero? that caught my attention.

If you like reality shows (me, not so much, but I actually caught part of this episode on one of my ‘unable to sleep’ nights), you may be familiar with Tori and Dean - Home Sweet Hollywood.  On a recent episode, Tori and Dean were looking at new houses to buy, and they were looking at one that was twice their budget.

While that in itself isn’t very remarkable, what was remarkable was Tori’s response to her husband’s objections that they couldn’t afford the house.

Instead of saying “we can’t afford it”, Tori’s attitude was “how can we afford this house?”.  She was willing to start a business - or even two - to be able to afford this house, even while 9 months pregnant!

In my financial planning business I work with a lot of people who are in debt.  I’d like to take Tori’s “how can we afford this house?” attitude and challenge those of you who are in debt, to consider…

Instead of asking, “how can I get out of this debt hole I’ve dug for myself?”, ask yourself, “how can I make more money?”.

By focusing on how to make more money, you’ll have a more positive attitude towards your money, and you’ll probably pay your debts off much faster than if you took a negative approach and spent your time worrying all the time.

What do you think?

That’s what clients are asking (or at least thinking) about the current stock market.

Well, I hate to break the news, but this IS normal!  The stock market goes up AND down.  It’s a cycle, made up of periods of expansion and periods of retraction, of good times and not-so-good times.

The market goes up, and periodically it needs to retract.  Right now we are in a retraction.  However, those who adopt a reasonable investment policy, diversify and rebalance their portfolio as needed - these folks have positive long-term investment experiences.

Those people who “forget” that the market is a cycle and panic when the market goes down will have negative experiences because they make decisions based on fear that cost them money in the long run.

So while this may be “normal”, there are some things you can do to improve your finances while we are waiting for the next expansion period in the stock market cycle:

• Make sure you are properly diversified.  You should have an overall allocation that matches your risk tolerance, your goals, and your time frame.
• Don’t try to time the market.  People who try to time the market often miss the best days (or weeks or years), causing them to lose out of hundreds, thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars in growth in their portfolio.
• When reviewing your portfolio, remember to view the big picture.  Some investments/accounts are more aggressive than others and will increase/decrease faster than others.  You need to view the portfolio as a whole to get a true understanding of how your portfolio is performing.
• Review your portfolio expenses.  Do you have funds with commissions or high annual operating expenses?   The less you pay in fees, the more money you have to work for you.
• If you are retired and are already withdrawing from your nest egg, now’s a good time to review your spending.  Are there any areas you can cut back on?  Do you have any hobbies or interests that can be turned into money making ventures?
• If you’re in the accumulation phase, now’s a great time to increase your retirement contributions.  Remember your goal is to buy low and sell high… well now is a great time to buy low!

If you’d like to learn more about the economy and the stock market cycle, here are some good articles for you to read:

Understanding Cycles by Investopedia - while I don’t agree that you should be timing the market cycles, this article does a great job explaining the economic and market cycles.

Presidential Elections and Stock Market Cycles - an interesting article about how the presidential elections and stock market cycles relate to each other.

How to Profit from Maket Volatility by Christine Benz of Morningstar.com - this is one of my favorite websites, click on the Personal Finance tab for tons of articles on a variety of personal finance issues.

One of my Twitter buddies recently asked what a blog carnival was and if it was a good idea to participate in one.

What a great question! According to BlogCarnival.com, a blog carnival is a blog community where articles on a particular topic are linked to on a blog host’s page. A blog carnival is similar to a magazine in that you have a topic, editors, contributors and readers. Blog carnivals are typically published on a regular schedule (can be weekly, monthly, etc.) and generally include editor comments along with links to all of the articles contributed.

Blog carnivals are a great way to find what people are blogging about on different subjects. So if you have a particular topic you are interested in, you can follow a carnival that features that topic to learn what other bloggers are writing.

Also, if you are a blogger yourself, contributing articles to blog carnivals is a great way to get new readers to your blog.

I have participated in blog carnivals - both as a contributor and a reader - for a couple of years now, and really enjoy them.

In fact… here are two carnivals that I am participating in this week:

The Carnival of Personal Finance, hosted by Might Bargain Hunter, and
The Carnival of Debt Reduction, hosted by HelpMyCashGrow.com