A couple months ago, a college-age friend who had his life savings with a bank that was generating daily headlines about its solvency and its subprime writedowns called me worried about what he should do.

He was having trouble sleeping, he was so worried about his money.

Here's what I told him: first, I explained that his money was FDIC-insured up to $100,000 (he had much less than that in the account) and that he didn't need to worry. (If you have more than $100,000 in savings, consider holding it a two different banks).

Then I told him to move the money to a different bank. Why? Most banks are similar enough that there's really no reason to keep money with one that makes you worry. Feel free to change banks for any reason or no reason -- whatever makes you happy.

You can read more posts about banks, including how they may be passing along the hits they've taken in the subprime fiasco onto their customers in the form of higher fees, in this site's banking category.