Matthew, I suggest you just open regular IRA at Vanguard and invest into one of their index funds, maximize your contributions for the next few years and once you have a sizable amount then you can reconsider SD IRA.  

As far as the stock market goes your money is at significantly more risk than a savings account and it is very volatile in the short term however over long term (10+ years) low cost index funds have proved themselves reliable, unfortunately this isn't a feasible time frame if you are saving for a down payment in most cases.

Unless you own an index fund you also have to keep up with what is going on in the markets .

Note to self - index cards for those questions alone!

I keep an eTrade account open for situations like this and throw my money into an index fund (usually an S&P 500 index fund).

https://pe.usps.com/StandardMailEligibility/Index Originally posted by @Ray Lai:@Kyle Gendron39-49 cent just for the stamp doesn't make financial sense.

Like zillow home index forecast.The home inspector can be a great asset.

Use part of the reserves for a multi family deal,and part in the stock market like an index for instance.

Does the interest rate need to be based on an index if it is a fixed rate /w a balloon?

From there we also discovered Afford Anything and the BP podcasts, where we realized that we wanted to go the real estate route, while still investing in low cost index funds on the side.