Selling a house

Hi Terry,
Could you please explain to me the options on where to reinvest money from a sale of a home? I When the house (vacation home) gets sold, I will not be buying another one. Where’s the safest place to keep money in these volatile times.

Terry Says: It sounds to me like you don’t want to lose ANY of this money.  If that’s the case, it is considered “chicken money” (see my columns, books) and it will have to go into a bank CD or money market account.  And before you object, yes I know that you won’t earn “anything” on these accounts with interest rates so low.  But that’s the definition of chicken money:  “I’m not so concerned about the return ON my money as I am about the return OF my money!”

Now, I may have assumed that you are older, perhaps in retirement, since you are selling a vacation home and want to put the money away.  But if I’m wrong about that, and you are not yet retired, then the answer may be to put some, not all, but some of the money into a conservative equity-income mutual fund (offered by most fund companies, including T. Rowe Price, Vanguard, Fidelity) and give it a chance to grow, especially if you have a 15-20 year time horizon before needing to use most of the money.