Best conservative six month investment?
 

We need to invest a sizable chunk safely for six months and do it within two weeks. (It will become someone else's 6mo and two weeks from now.) Any ideas better than a 3% CD? Even if CD's, who has the best options right now?

Thanks!

...Now back to scouring the newspaper...

Government t-bills.

As far as a short term interest collecting vehicle, it is absolutely safe. It doesn't accrue much in interest, but that is the risk.

How conservative do you need to be?

What are the circumstances surrounding the statement?

Now, looking into my crystal ball, I look at a few possibilities:

1. There has been a classic 'Bank Error In Your Favour, Collect 100$' monopoly game events, and you are syphoning the interest off before they realize their mistake.

2. There is a money-laundering thing happening, where you are hiding it for someone for a specific amount of time. Is one of your good buddies getting a divorce, and he wants to "keep it away from the Bitch's lawyer"?

Please be careful when attempting to syphon interest... the courts often decide that you need to pay back all accrued interest as part of the damages.

If everything is legit, and you need absolute security, always go fo a government (or huge big bank) investment certificate...

Life insurance vs. estate settlement at 9mo. Perhaps I should have said the more we earn the more of the estate we save.

Good thoughts. Zero risk isn't necessary. We get a small amount leaving it with the insurance company but want better return. Certificates were our first thought.

---
I did such a good job of not preparing for this that I was very well prepared to not be ready.

If zero risk is not necessary, then invest the whole lot in an indexed fund...

Like the NYSE index, or NASDAQ. The stock exchanges have a system where they take your money and diversify it across all stocks listed on the exchange.

You can do a global exchange if that's your bag, and I can't really recommend one over the other (I don't want you to blame me if something happens i.e. you lose money) other than to explain the principles:

With an indexed fund, you remove all of the inherent risk of a certain stock, and instead are left with a pure MARKET RISK, which any economist, political scientist, statistician will tell you is unavoidable. Hell, the only things that don't have these market risks are government backed vehicles, because, well, they make the damn rules, and won't allow themselves to lose money!

So, if you are feeling up for it, throw the money into the NYSE / NASDAQ / S&P 500 / TSE et cetera and watch the business portion of the news every day to see if you are winning.

I would say (my opinion only, I accept no blame here) that if you are looking at something so short term, you could do far worse than an index fund.

Good luck, Cyrnel.

i read that lockheed martin has this perfect 10 program thing, its like 10% CD for 6 months so yea, look into it, one drawback is u need to be a member. but min is 1000 and max is 2500 so ud only make 125 but hey.. lol

You can get 3.3 percent in a regular savings account at ING Direct, the major web-based bank. And you can take it out whenever you want to. That's not much better than 3 percent, but it's not bad; and it's completely flexible. Take out all or part at any time without penalty.

Hollywood Park
6th Race
Horse- "Risky Business"
Jockey- Blind Louie
Odds-1000-1
Can't lose, the fix is in.

Heh, yea, okay. Darn, missed that one too.

The other one that got away: Exxon. Not that I like betting on the thieves but my fantasy investment gained ~13% since 8/18. Back to National Speak Like a Pirate day. "Arrrr!" <img src="http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/images/smilies/hmmm.gif">