Investing your grad stipend

[phd_prospie]

Does anyone else receive their entire nine-month grad stipend as a lump sum in the Fall? Any suggestions for the rest of us on how to invest it? 

[rising_star]

This post might help:

[raneck]

This depends entirely on what you mean by investment.  You are going to need the money in less than a year, and so you are looking at putting the money in ether a very short term CD or a money market/savings account.  You can search on www.bankrate.com, www.depositaccounts.com, or www.nerdwallet.com to find the best rates for the time period you are looking at.  If you mean investment in a more speculative sense (i.e. stocks, etc), I seriously recommend against doing that with money that you know you will need.

 

I am currently keeping my cash holdings in an online banking savings account at 0.90%, which is about the best you can get right now while still maintaining principal and liquidity.  You may be able to get higher rates with "rewards checking" accounts (see: http://www.depositaccounts.com/checking/reward-checking-accounts.html), but these tend to come with more strings attached (minimum number of debit card uses per month, minimum balance, maximum balance, etc.)

Edited April 29, 2014 by raneck