Hi Lee,
I remember during the savings and loan failures my savings account was with University Savings. I was still getting a live check and running to the bank after work on Fridays to get there before they closed at 6:00 PM. One day I remember asking one of the bank tellers how safe they were because of the savings and loan problems. She said they were very safe (what else was she to say). A few weeks later on a Friday I got out of my car, ran up to the door in a hurry, and almost broke my wrist trying to yank the door open. The door was locked and a memo was on the door saying they went belly up. I almost stroked out on the spot. However, the good news is that it said it was re-opening on Monday because another bank/savings and loan was taking over.
During that same timeframe I sent an email (no email at the time but an intra company type of email) to HR services asking who held the fixed income investments in our 401 K. I did this based on an article I read. They sent a response back that they were bought from 15 banks and insurance companies. Since it was fixed income it was suppose to be the most safe. Shortly later, suprise, one of them failed, and 6% of the money in fixed investments was frozen. You could not move it to another investment, or do anything with it. That went on for 6 years. Then when the company went thru bankrucpty and sold everything off, we got lucky and got all of our money back, and I believe some interest. However, we did not know for about 6 years what was going to happen to that 6%.
As I mentioned before I worked for a company quite a few years ago and was layed off end of 2008. Had a nice severance package comming and wham-oh they filed bankrucpty and the severance stopped immediately. I have a claim sitting there going on three years since the bankrucpty, but still do not know, if I will get a penny more.
Bottom line is that bankrucpty is nasty. You sweat it out, it drags on for ever, and money gets tied up, and you don't know how big the haircut will be. Normally claim forms are involved to claim any money you think you are owed, etc... It is just a bad experience.
