You can also ladder investment grade bonds, muni bonds, treasuries etc. to add to the mix,

Anonymous wrote:We have about $100k it cash on hand that we want to keep safe but get some return. We have other investments but want this as our safe money

Thinking about doing a CD ladder over 5 years- $20k for 1 year, $20k for 2 years etc..

Any better ideas on guaranteed returns for our cash?

Im in the same boat OP. I have about 100k in cash from the sell of a property. We are really on the fence about moving in the next 3 years so we have just been keeping it in savings account in case we need to pull it out for a down payment. But I would love to something else. but hard to think of what if our horizen is under 5 years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We use this strategy for private school tuition payments. So, the money is earning some interest, but it’s definitely going to be there, something that we couldn’t guarantee with a riskier investment strategy. The CDs mature every year the same time the tuition payment is due.

We do the same thing. What are your plans for college? Continuing to keep the tuition in a CD ladder? We did that this year because the need to decide crept up on us. I'm not sure if it's the best move going forward, however.

I'm a different PP, but we have 3 in college and one in private school right now, and we have enough in a CD ladder to cover what the 529s won't.

Also, Ally Bank has an 11-month No Penalty CD (can w/draw after 6 days from account funding) at 2% right now. So we're laddering a couple of those w/12 mo and 18 mo CDs. As PP mentioned, in a rising interest rate environment you shouldn't lock up your money in 3-5 year CDs, especially since they're not paying much more than a 12 month one.

And thanks to the PP who brought up the T-bill ladder. I'm going to look at that today because if you're in the top tax brackets it probably makes more sense than the CDs.

Anonymous wrote:We use this strategy for private school tuition payments. So, the money is earning some interest, but it’s definitely going to be there, something that we couldn’t guarantee with a riskier investment strategy. The CDs mature every year the same time the tuition payment is due.

We do the same thing. What are your plans for college? Continuing to keep the tuition in a CD ladder? We did that this year because the need to decide crept up on us. I'm not sure if it's the best move going forward, however.

We use this strategy for private school tuition payments. So, the money is earning some interest, but it’s definitely going to be there, something that we couldn’t guarantee with a riskier investment strategy. The CDs mature every year the same time the tuition payment is due.