Brokerage vs. Savings account - what would you do?

[OutBy40]

Guys,

I'd like to get your thoughts on something that my wife and I are planning to make happen within the next year or so.

Long story short, we live in Tucson, AZ and want to move to Sedona, AZ (red rock country) within the next 5 years.  It's not a cheap place to live, unfortunately.  So, the plan is to buy a townhouse in Sedona in the short term and begin renting that place out.  The idea here is to both establish ourselves in Sedona and start paying down a mortgage as quickly as possible so when we do move up there, we move straight into the [hopefully paid for] townhouse, pocket our entire salary without a mortgage payment, then eventually move into our permanent single family home in Sedona and re-list the townhouse as a rental property.

So, we need to put some money together to make as large of a down payment as possible.  We have several hundred thousand dollars in investments, but we'd like to not touch those for the sake of the down payment.  We currently put $4,000 every month straight into our brokerage account that we have setup through Vanguard.  This $4,000 is in addition to both my wife and I completely maxing out our 401ks.

The idea that we're playing with is taking $1500 out of that $4000 and put that into an interest-bearing savings account every month that we already have setup for another purpose.  By the end of the year, we'd like $30k to use as the down payment on the townhouse. 

Ultimately, my question is this: Is it generally advisable to use a savings account where the money is easier to get at for this kind of near term spending - but obviously isn't growing like it would in a brokerage account?  Or, would continuing to put the entire $4000 into the brokerage account be more advantageous instead and simply sell some of those investments and pay the taxes on the capital gains when we are ready to make the down payment?

What to do, what to do...

Thanks.

[TreeTired]

but obviously isn't growing like it would in a brokerage account?

Nor will it decline like it possibly could if invested in stocks in a brokerage account.   A bank savings account is exactly the place for savings that you anticipate using within the next year.

[mveill1]

Over a single year you can't possibly know that the money would grow in a brokerage account, and not actually shrink. It has to be the bank account.

[OutBy40]

Great, looks as though there was some sort of wisdom behind our decision to divert some of our investment cash over into a savings account in support of a future down payment.  I wanted to make sure that there wasn't something that I was missing about this situation.

Thanks.

[stlbrah]

What about ge capital bank? I have a large chunk of money that I am not comfortable investing because like you, I plan to relocate and purchase a new property when I move. The amount of money that I have in my savings account is probably excessive, but i still max out 401k and roth ira. Might as well get about 1% return on it even if it is dead money.

[biffwhipster]

I don't have any advice, but I do admire your mustachian problems.