[USER]

We moved to a lovely but super old house last year, and sold our previous place for a bit more than we spent on the new one. We parked about $200k in proceeds in a HYSA at Fidelity for upcoming renovations.

All advice said not to invest since we needed it likely within about a year.

Now a year has gone by, and it turns out the reno is going to be way more complex than initially expected, and there’s a good chance we won’t be starting for another 6-9 months.

Hubby had a big stock cliff vest, so there’s another $150k or so that goes into that same pile, and it’s really starting to irk me that it’s just sitting there not doing nearly what it should.
Thoughts on what I might want to responsibly do with $350k for the medium term?

It would not be devastating if we lost a little, but ideally the money would make money.

So something boring but moving. The money won’t all be due right away, too, so if we start in 9 months, we’ll just start needing to draw monthly amounts to cover things as the construction progresses.

We’re at Fidelity but all the funds are starting to look like alphabet soup to me

[Jeremy]

I don’t know, anything more than a short term CD is way too risky in my book. Are you certain you don’t have to pay anything until the renovation is complete?

You won’t need money along the way?
Short term CD or HYSA is my vote.

[Megan]

If there are different tiers of your Reno plan (example must haves vs nice to have) think through how much you want to invest vs keep liquid that way.

[Kyle]

Leave it in the HYSA. 9 months to even a couple years is not medium term. It’s still short term. If you plan to use it all in construction you don’t want to invest it.

You could dollar cost average small increments ($5K – $10K) of cash into a brokerage account if you really wanted.

As long as it’s money your income could replace for construction costs before you would need it but I personally wouldn’t.

You’ll be making decent interest off the HYSA.

[Kevin]

6-9 month CD.
Many banks are offering special rates for this intermediate term.

Safer than the market, better rate (potentially) than a HYSA.

[Micah]

If you can stomach a 25% loss, go ahead and dump into the market.. that’s the way I always process these types of decision.

[Author]

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