Over the last 8 months, my husband and I have been saving for a down payment. We had a nice little start and needed to place it somewhere safer than under the bed or in a boot. So the question came up, where should we put this extra money we saved? We couldn’t leave it in our checking account, it would be far too easy for us to ‘accidentally’ spend and it wouldn’t make us any money.

A savings account was obviously the better place for it. We searched Bankrate’s savings accounts by interest rate, and decided to place it in a Capital One high yield savings account. They don’t have the highest interest rate of all the possible banks, but at least I had heard of them and their rate wasn’t much lower, at 1.75%, than any of the unknown banks. American Express Personal Savings is also offering a high yield savings account closer to 2%. Flashback for a moment, I remember when I was a teenager and rates were 6-8%, those were the days! Too bad I didn’t have much money then.

A month ago, while our savings account was slowly accruing a little interest, my husband had a brilliant plan for us to make more than the pitiful 1.75% interest, invest in stocks. Yes, this is slightly risky, however we decided to take a small mount from our savings (25% of our savings to be exact), now that we actually had a savings, and invest using an online broker. So far, my husband has made some good choices and has been consistently profiting 8-9% on his investments.

The goal is to continue profiting more than our 1.75% savings rate so that in the next 6-12 months, the stock investments will contribute toward our down payment. If we can stick to our savings plan, we might even be able to continue investing after purchasing our little house in the valley.