Best Places to Park Money Short Term?

[Kevin Coggins]

Looking for some other ideas about where to put money to place short term ($1,000 for one year, the other $1,000 for 2 yrs), basically this is money on top of my emergency fund that I'm saving for big ticket costs for either car/house. So far what I've considered are the following:

• Stock Market, but even with an ETF or index fund I could withdraw at a 10-20% loss
• Considered bonds, but risk/reward isn't really worth it since they could as well drop 10% in the short term
• CD for 12 months @ 1.5%

Currently, I have my Emergency fund + the extra money getting 1% interest. Currently, only about $2,000 to potentially move out, but I add about $250/mo to the account. I'm wondering if there are any other areas that others are using that I haven't considered, or a place to get better rates?

[Robert Leonard]

I think you are definitely overthinking this, if we are talking about maximizing the ROI on $2,000 in 2 years? If you found the great XYZ strategy and made 30% ROI, you would have $600 more in two years. That same strategy probably comes with the risk of losing 30% just as easy and you would have $600 less. Small beans (within the range of $1200) in most scenarios of buying a house or car as you stated in the OP.