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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Laddering sounds like a giant pain.  Why not just put it all in a money market fund?  I can't imagine you'll earn much, if any more, doing the laddering.[/quote]

Five-year CD rates are considerably higher than money market rates for the most part. (We keep cash in both places, in part because the money market funds are far more accessible.) Bonds are also a reasonable option but their rates aren't fixed, and overall over the last 10 years, I think we did better having funds in CDs vs. I bond rates (3% yield on average). That may not hold true for the next ten years, though.

It's a little work to set up on the front end, but after that it's just a matter of deciding what you want to do with the money as each CD matures. We try to start ours all in the same month so that every year in March, we figure out if we want to roll them over or put the cash somewhere different. I can't deal with having a million different CDs in different places so we keep most with our credit union (which generally has pretty competitive rates) and at any given point may have a set at one or two other banks. Our credit union has a program where you can take short-term loans using the CD as collateral, which we have done a couple of times for short-term cash needs, so that's a benefit too.
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