What should I do with all my cash?

[megalicious]

Ok, I'm a MM fail for not knowing this already, but H and I have way too much in our checking/savings accounts (like 75k+). We currently rent and just agreed to another year lease. If our landlords were to decide to sell the condo we would probably have to buy rather than find another rental. What can I do with all that $$ to have it earn some interest and still have it fairly accessible?

[gt7301b]

If you are going to need access in a year there aren't a lot of good options. I'd look into a high interest online account like the one offered by ING. Another option would be iBonds. You have to hold then for a year and there is a 3 month interest penalty if you remove your money between years 1-5, but they have better return than most online accounts I have seen.

[Deleted]

I'd invest (a few thousands a month) in no load index funds with low expense ratio, probably at least one stock fund and one bond fund. The ratio will depend on how "accessible" you want it to be.

[megalicious]

Nov 14, 2012 8:55:27 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

Invest it.

Why would you "have to buy" if your condo were sold? What's the likelihood that's even going to happen? Risk-free interest rates are very, very low (i.e. not even enough to keep up with inflation) so if you want your money to do any work for you, you need to take at least a little risk with it. Look into index funds. Maybe start by investing just a portion of the $75K to get yourself comfortable with it.

Our rent is well below market rate. The owners had it on the market for a year before deciding to rent it out. I'm sure at some point they plan to put it back on the market. We're model tenants, so hopefully it won't be anytime soon. An equivalent place would be at least 1k more, which would be more than a mortgage payment.

Any suggestions on picking a fund?