Is robinhood backed up by an insurance company
"robinhood is a member of finra, just like any other broker.  as such, they can't legally ""lose"" your assets. even if they file bankruptcy, you will get your money back. obviously, any broker can steal your assets, but i doubt robinhood is any more likely to steal from you, even if you are rich. here is a quote from an article on thestreet.com: So, despite the name, the Robinhood philosophy isn't about stealing   from rich, but rather taking perks often reserved for top-tier   investors and giving them to the everyman trader"
Can't tell you where to go for a good policy, but I can tell you that most brokers make a hefty commission out of your payments for at least a year before you even start funding the tax sheltered investment account that you're trying to buy under the umbrella of life insurance. You'll have to do a lot of homework to hunt down a reputable discount broker or a direct policy purchase from the insurance company. Life insurance requires insurable need. The description is vague enough, that you can probably still get the account despite being a single male with no apparent heirs to benefit, but it raises the question of why you are buying the insurance. Whole life policies require you to maintain a certain ratio of investment to premium payment and you will likely never be able access all of the money in the account for your own personal usage. Compare several policies from several brokers and companies. Read all the critical sources you can about the pitfalls and dangers of commissions, fees and taxes eating the benefits of your account. Verify that the insurance company you buy the policy from is financially stable after the market crash. You are paying a commission to pool your money into their investment fund, and if your insurer goes under, you'll have to get a portion of your money (possibly only the principle) back from the state insurance commissioner. Some companies sold pretty generous policies during the bubble and have cut their offerings way down without fixing their marketing literature and rosy promises.  Finally, let us know what you find. It never hurts to see hard numbers and to run multiple eyes over the legalese in these contracts. The issue of unclaimed life insurance policies is a hot topic right now. Your questions are exactly the reason why. For a long time unclaimed life insurance policies have been a boon to life insurance companies but the states are cracking down. There is a lot of new legislation that requires the companies to make a diligent effort to find the rightful beneficiary. In some states if the beneficiary can't be found the proceeds wind up in the states abandoned assets fund. The death benefit is payable if the policy was in force on the date of death. Since no premium is actually due after the insured dies it doesn't matter if the policy lapses after the insured dies. You're correct that there is no one place to go to find out if you are the beneficiary of an unclaimed life insurance policy. Our agency has a resource page which gives you tactics to follow in order to do a search. See How To Find Lost Or Unclaimed Life Insurance Policies. I had a client that BoA forced escrows, and then forgot to pay their insurance company, and during the period the client's policy lapsed. While the policy was lapsed, a tree fell on the roof during a storm creating a huge hole. When they contacted their insurance, they were of course told the policy was cancelled for non payment. When they contacted BoA they admitted to their mistake and apologized, but accepted no responsibility in helping the homeowner with repairs. Instead, they gave them back the 2 months of escrows, and stopped collecting escrows for insurance and taxes all together.  My client spent all the money they were reimbursed, and had saved up fixing their roof, and couldn't make payments that following month. BoA threw their hands up and said oh well, not our problem. They explained why they weren't able or prepared to pay them on time, and eventually ended up falling 3 months behind, when BoA decided to foreclose on them.  Being average consumers that didn't know their rights, they lost their home, but have now filed suit. One could only hope the court awards these people maximum damages. BoA needs to be taken down, and has no business being in existence after all they have done to the consumers. "According to US News, renter's insurance does cover liability as well as your own belongings.  They list this as one of four ""myths"" often promulgated about renter's insurance.  This is backed up by esurance.com, which explicitly mentions ""Property damage to others"" as covered.  Nationwide Insurance says that renter's insurance covers ""Personal liability insurance for renters"" and ""Personal umbrella liability insurance"".  Those were the first three working links for ""what does renters insurance cover"" on Google.   In short, while it is possible that you currently have a different kind of coverage, this is not a limitation of renter's insurance per se.  It could be a limitation in your current coverage.  You may be able to simply change your coverage with your current provider.  Or switch providers.  Or you may already be covered.   Note that renter's insurance does not cover the building against general damage, e.g. tornado or a fire spreading from an adjacent building.  It is specific to covering things that you caused.  This may be the cause of the confusion, as some sources say that it doesn't cover anything in the building.  That's generally not true.  It usually covers all your liability except for specific exceptions (e.g. waterbed insurance is often extra)." For cash, SIPC insurance is similar to FDIC insurance. Your losses are not covered, but you're covered in case of fraud. Since your cash is supposed to be in a trust account and not commingled with brokerage's funds, in case of bankruptcy you would still have your cash unless there was fraud. Here's a good rule of thumb. In any situation where you are required to purchase insurance (Auto Liability, Property Mortgage Insurance, etc.) you can safely assume that you aren't the primary beneficiary. You are being required to buy that insurance to protect someone else's investment. Many brokerage accounts for trading stocks are covered under SIPC insurance, which is up to $500,000  You can also have multiple checking and savings accounts with the $250,000 balance split up. You can also check your bank's capital ratio on the FDIC website, somewhere. The FDIC won't move on them unless it falls under 3% and even then FDIC will force them into receivership and sell them to a bigger bank before they go bust and experience losses of customer deposits. This is what mostly happened when hundreds of banks failed during the crisis from 2008-2010. There were very isolated events where customers actually lost their cash balances, and that was mostly because those customers had completely uninsured accounts. As that was the most extreme moment in US and global financial history, you should be able to judge risk with the aforementioned information in mind. You can stay in a cash balance easily and be fully insured. To fairly compare a comp-only job to a job that offers insurance, get a quote for health insurance. Call your local insurance broker and find out what it would cost. Because if you aren't getting insurance from your employer, you'll have to get it elsewhere. If you get a quote on an HSA, don't forget to add in the annual deductible as part of the cost. On the ESPP, I'd count it as zero. The rationale being that so much of your financial status is tied to your employer that you don't really want to tie up too much more in company stock. (I.e. Company hits hard times, stock tanks, and then they lay you off. Double whammy -- both your assets and income.) But given that I've only been employed by companies that no longer exist in their original form, my perspective may be warped.