Imagine you win a $1.5 billion lottery. I looked up a while back how one of the states pays big lottery winners. Answer: They always mail you a check, and you cannot split up your share into multiple checks (they'll split it among multiple winners, but not one). So they claim, anyway. So you sit at home and wait for the mail for 2 or 3 weeks until it finally gets delivered by your friendly neighborhood post office employee. Then I guess you take your $750M check down to your local Penny Saver Credit Union and endorse it and deposit it? Overnight increasing their deposits 5-fold?

Now, back in the 80's I "enjoyed" two different financial institution takeovers. One, a credit union, whose assets were bought by a S&L. And then about 5 years later, that S&L. (Ah--the good old days.) But they were federally insured and from my perspective nothing happened beyond closed on Friday, open again with a new name and my meager assets intact on Monday and told to get new checks soon as possible. But if I had >$100,000 there? TOTALLY different story (insurance was $100K back then).

So I find this notion ludicrous. But I don't know how else you do it except pick a too-big-to-fail bank and trust the Feds will still bail out Citi or Morgan or whomever if they go under in the days between when you deposit the check and when you can move most of the money to a plethora of institutions. And are they going to put a 10-day hold on your deposit? LOL.

So... how DO you do it?