#334 Where to Park Money You’re Going to Need Soon ft. Peter Kim, MD
In this episode, Peter breaks down exactly where to keep money that has a deadline attached to it, using a real conversation with his own parents as the framework. He walks through why a normal checking account quietly costs you thousands a year, and lays out the actual tiers of options based on how fast you might need the cash, from high-yield savings accounts to T-bills to no-penalty CDs.
If you’re sitting on proceeds from a home sale, a practice buyout, or a down payment with an uncertain timeline, this episode tells you exactly what to do with it and what to avoid entirely. Tune in!
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Episode Highlights
Now, let’s look at what we discussed in this episode:
- The Question His Parents Couldn’t Answer
- The Real Cost of Doing Nothing
- Tier 1, Money You Might Need This Week
- Tiers 2 and 3, When You Have a Little More Time
- Where This Money Should Never Go, and What He Actually Did
Here’s a breakdown of how this episode unfolds.
Episode Breakdown
The Question His Parents Couldn’t Answer
Peter opens with a story about his parents, who had cash ready to buy a home and asked him a seemingly simple question, where should they keep this money until they found a place. He started to answer, then stopped himself, realizing he was about to give advice without knowing the one thing that actually mattered. When he asked when they’d need it, they had no idea, it could be next month or it could be years depending on how the housing search went.
Peter uses this to introduce the core framework for the whole episode. Every dollar you’re holding either has a date attached to it or it doesn’t. If it has a date, your only job is making sure the money is actually there when you need it. If it doesn’t have a date, it’s not really cash at all, it’s investment capital, and it probably shouldn’t be sitting in a low interest account in the first place.
He notes he’s recording this in mid-September 2026 and will use real numbers throughout, since he thinks vague advice isn’t actually useful even though specific rates will drift over time. He points out that this situation isn’t unusual, plenty of people are sitting on money from a home sale, a practice buyout, an inheritance, or a down payment waiting for the right property.
The Real Cost of Doing Nothing
Peter breaks down the first way this typically goes wrong, money just sitting in a checking account earning close to nothing. He runs the numbers on $200,000 sitting in a typical checking account, which is not unusual for a physician between deals or after a home sale. Most checking accounts pay effectively zero, while the national average savings rate sits around 0.38%, compared to nearly 4% available elsewhere with minimal effort. On $200,000, that gap works out to roughly $8,000 a year left on the table.
He’s careful not to make people feel bad about this, pointing out that $8,000 is real money, but it’s not something to lose sleep over if you fix it next month instead of today.
The second way this goes wrong is the one he actually cares about. This is when money with a date attached gets placed somewhere it can’t be reliably accessed, like a syndication deal or the stock market, in hopes of earning more than 4%. He shares that he’s talked to physicians who put a home down payment into an investment because the market was performing well at the time, and while the logic made sense in the moment, it created real risk if that money couldn’t come back when actually needed.
Tier 1, Money You Might Need This Week
Peter organizes the rest of the episode by how quickly money can actually be accessed, starting with funds that might be needed within a week. His top recommendation here is a high-yield savings account or a money market fund, both currently paying somewhere around 4.1% to 4.2%. High-yield savings accounts are FDIC insured up to $250,000 per depositor per bank, with no maturity dates or rollovers to manage, which he says matters more than people give it credit for.
He flags two things worth watching. First, rates on these accounts are variable and sometimes promotional, meaning a great rate two years ago might be quietly lower today without any notice from the bank. Second, if money is needed within a week, an ACH transfer can take a couple of days, so a wire might be necessary to move at the speed required.
Money market funds work similarly but live inside a brokerage account, aren’t FDIC insured, and typically hold Treasuries or repo agreements instead. He notes that money market yields move almost immediately with the Fed, while bank rates tend to lag, and recommends checking the 7-day SEC yield to compare funds accurately.
Tiers 2 and 3, When You Have a Little More Time
For money that isn’t needed for at least a few weeks, Peter moves into Treasury bills and Treasury ETFs. A 3-month T-bill currently yields around 4.13%, purchased through a brokerage with maturities ranging from 4 weeks to a full year. If held to maturity, there’s no price risk involved, you know exactly what you’re getting and when. He shares a lesson learned the hard way, that buying T-bills directly through TreasuryDirect instead of a brokerage can create delays when transferring funds later, which matters if your timeline turns out to be shorter than expected.
For a longer, still uncertain timeline, Peter introduces no-penalty CDs, something he says he didn’t even know existed until relatively recently. Unlike standard CDs, these let you lock in a rate for 11 to 13 months while still allowing full withdrawal after a short initial lockout period, giving rate certainty without the usual penalty risk. He personally uses these for capital he holds between deals, though the rate typically runs a bit below top savings accounts.
He also shares two practical tips, checking whether uninvested cash sitting in a brokerage account is actually earning anything, since some brokerages don’t automatically sweep it into a money market fund, and looking into sweep programs that spread deposits across partner banks to push FDIC coverage well beyond $250,000. For anyone in a high tax state like California, he notes that Treasury interest is often exempt from state income tax, making a 4% Treasury effectively comparable to a 4.5% bank rate, though this advantage disappears entirely in no income tax states like Texas or Florida.
Where This Money Should Never Go, and What He Actually Did
Peter flips the conversation to where money with a date attached should never end up. The first category is anything illiquid by design, like real estate syndications with 3 to 7 year hold periods and no secondary market, or private notes and hard money lending. He’s honest that he’s personally experienced capital not coming back on the timeline he expected, which was fine for money without a deadline, but would have been a serious problem for a home down payment.
The second category is things that are technically liquid but still risky for time sensitive money, primarily the stock market. Even though shares can be sold any day, there’s no guarantee the price will be favorable when the money is actually needed, and a market downturn at the wrong moment can force a bad decision. He also mentions crypto’s extreme volatility, standard CDs with early withdrawal penalties, and bonds or annuities that get pitched as safe but don’t offer the flexibility uncertain timelines require.
Finally, Peter shares what his parents actually did with their money, keeping it simple with one high-yield savings account using a cash sweep program to maintain full FDIC coverage across partner banks. It wasn’t the highest yielding option available, potentially costing a few thousand dollars a year in missed interest or tax advantages, but the simplicity and instant access mattered more, especially once they found a home and needed the money quickly for a short escrow. For his own money between deals, Peter says he spreads it across several of these tools, treasuries, CDs, and sweep accounts, prioritizing flexibility even though it takes more effort to manage.
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