Any safe-ish investments for < 1 year?

[muckabout]

I need to keep a pool of money for taxes next year, so whatever I do with the money it needs to be liquid around April. Is there anything with a better yield (while still being fairly safe) than a savings account I can do with it until then?

[icefr]

The only good option for < 1 year is an online savings account where the interest rates are marginally better than what you can find at your local bank/credit union. Ally is fetching 0.84% these days. Other online banks may have better rates, but it's not worth rate chasing for the small-ish amount I keep in savings these days.

[Will]

This is normally where I would go on about my local credit union paying great rates, but since they just lowered the rates for savings from 7.5% to 5% and checking from 2.05% to 1.75%, I'm not going to get into it.

[mjs111]

I wouldn't get fancy with any money you'll need in less than a year. Just stick it in a savings account, regardless of the low interest rate. You know you have a debt payable to the IRS in just 8 months. Investments in my experience tend to need a 2-3 year time frame to work out on average.   

Look at it this way. Even though that money is technically the IRS's, you still get to  earn a little bit of interest on the "float" until April. That's still not so bad.


Mike