For the last few months, I’ve been tracking the best place for investors to stash their short-term cash and reporting the results on the blog I write for Examiner.com. That column has started to track savings and CD rates available at Seattle branches to comply with Examine.com rules. So I’m going to use this column to track the best national cash stash locations.
I use the services of MoneyAisle.com to obtain rates. Here are current rates on a CD ladder compared to those available a month ago.
3/1/10 2/1/10
12 months 1.80% 1.92%
24 months 2.11 2.21
36 months 2.51 2.68
48 months 2.75 2.94
60 months 3.25 3.25
As you can see, rates are actually a little lower today than a month ago, but the change is immaterial. The big take-away from this data is that rates are still historically low and remain pretty flat. The good news is that inflation has been low so the real rate of return is okay. But the yellow flag is that inflation is picking up so if you want to stash your cash in CDs, keep the duration very short. No more than a year.