I’ve avoided writing about the housing bubble collapse, largely because it’s been so darned depressing, but things are finally cascading into the economy at large and beginning to personally affect me.

About a year ago I wondered if the housing bubble was going to collapse and even affect the tech scene by dragging down the entire economy. I think at this point, contingency plans need to be set up for the worst case scenario.

Anyhow, after the string of bailouts, I’m now distracted by Washington Mutual, our primary bank. The more I read about what’s up with them the more concerned I become that they will fail.

Of course there is talk that the FDIC insures 100K and below, but reading articles where the FDIC could very well run out of money if a series of banks fail - well, isn’t exactly comforting.

That’s not to say that I don’t think that if I had funds wrapped up in a bank on the brink and had to get bills paid from that money that I wouldn’t proactively move my dollars to another, more solid bank. I would.

Basically, I rely on a bank to have money available 24/7, every day, because I have bills to pay. So I just opened another checking account at Fidelity, and will probably open another one at ING (where we have a savings account), both as contingency plans. I’m setting them up to pull all our money out of WaMu and am in the process of moving both our paychecks to be direct deposited elsewhere.

Yes, it’s true that by doing this, I’m effectively “running” from WaMu which is exactly what the government is telling us not to do. I don’t care. It’s my money and I have to do what it takes to preserve it. While it’s said I probably have nothing to worry about, and WaMu may or may not fail, I’m not going to passively sit still and find out. I can’t afford it. At the very least, I want to be first in line during the bank run, not the guy at the end getting the finger.

It’s sad that in this day and age, we have to worry about crap like this. But I guess this housing bubble thing is at last affecting all of us, even those who didn’t take out a risky mortgage.

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