Headlines blaze in the past few days, full of the fear rippling through Wall Street and the banking industry. But so far, there's little talk yet of the justifiable fear that regular consumers have about who's holding their money and if it going to be there tomorrow. After all, Main Street tends to live a tighter money-life than Wall Street and therefore we potentially have that much more to lose should one of ours go under. Nearly half of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. What's in the bank may be all we have.

Lehman Brothers

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[LEH  Loading...      ()   ] (the burning-up financial institution of the day) is not exactly full of Main Street bankers, but when names like Washington Mutual

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[WM  Loading...      ()   ] and Bank of America

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[BAC  Loading...      ()   ] (even though news is good) get into black and white and on screen so close to chatter on Lehman's bankruptcy, regular America gets scared—again.

We felt this with IndyMac and Countrywide earlier in the year and we all want the money-madness to be over. But the bank failures keep coming. More and more local and national banks have made the most recent FDIC "danger" list—which they will not disclose until the you-know-what hits the fan. Some news outlets have been naming names but only the FDIC and true insiders have the scoop we'd love to know: Is my bank safe?

Here's what we do know: If your bank is FDIC insured, your money is insured, with limits. As we saw in the aftermath of IndyMac, it can take some time to get 100% your money but in the 75 years the FDIC has been around, they have maintained a solid record of coverage. However, we also haven't seen a banking and credit crisis like this in generations but in an American court of law, insurance like this is insurance. I believe in the guarantees that the FDIC provides and so should you.

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.

Let information be your rock. Here are the consumer-information pages at the FDIC's web site where you can find out if your bank and your individual and joint accounts fall under FDIC coverage (remember, total cash held in one bank insured to $100,000, IRAs to $250,000): Are My Deposits Insured?

This is the FDIC's online tool to check coverage if you have multiple accounts and more than $100,000: EDIE.

And should you want to shop around for another possibly more stable place to put your funds, even if you have coverage but it doesn't give you peace of mind, check Bankrate.com's Safe and Sound ratings. Not a guarantee a bank is out of danger, but certainly a useful bit of research. The FDIC site also offers up several other ratings sites here.

Keep watching the show and this site for updates and let me know what you're most worried about as banks continue to take the headlines. I want to help as many of you as I can.