MW I have $310,000 in cash from a maturing CD. Where should I put it next?
By Beth Pinsker
A 'tsunami' of CDs coming due is vexing savers who are worried about redeploying their money
Trillions of dollars in CDs are coming due in 2026 - and many savers must decide on the next way to invest that money.
Got a question about investing, how it fits into your overall financial plan and what strategies can help you make the most out of your money? You can write to me at beth.pinsker@marketwatch.com. Please put "Fix My Portfolio" in the subject line.
Dear Fix My Portfolio,
I have $310,000 in CDs maturing today. Where should I put these funds and how should I invest? Hopefully I will not need the cash in the next 12 to 18 months.
-Instantly Rich
Dear Instantly,
I have a lot of questions for you, starting with: Why did you have so much money in a CD maturing all at once? I ask this not because I'm being nosy or judgmental, but because it matters for what you do next with the funds.
One potential answer, which is the best-case scenario I can think of, is that this is just a fraction of your overall net worth, and you have other fixed-income investments laddered to come due every six to 12 months for the next several years. When you structure time deposits like this with either CDs, Treasurys or other bonds, you create a buffer for yourself from interest-rate risk. If you're in a traditional 60/40 portfolio mix, that would mean there's another two-thirds of your wealth in equities, for a pretty substantial total portfolio.
If that's so, you'd be in good shape overall, and you could roll that $310,000 into the next rung of your ladder pretty confidently. You could also pick a 5-year TIPS product or something like a 3-year Treasury note BX:TMUBMUSD03Y, and both would let you lock in at about 4%. You can buy those either direct from the government at TreasuryDirect.gov or through your brokerage of choice.
Given the way the world economy is going right now, though, you may not want to tie up cash for that long, because rates are in flux. When I spoke to financial adviser Matt McKay about the new I-bond rate coming in at the head of the pack at 4.26%, he said he isn't thinking of investments for his clients further out than three years in the future.
With that in mind, you might want to consider rolling that money into equities instead - if it's true that you have other fixed-income investments coming due in the next six months or so, and you have the cash you need now.
More options for your cash
The more likely scenario you are dealing with, which is slightly less advantageous for you, is that some time ago, you came into around $300,000. Interest rates on CDs were probably looking pretty good at the time, so you put the whole nut in at once and let it ride.
One thing to point out here is that the FDIC insurance coverage limit for deposit accounts is $250,000 per depositor, per account type. So if you put all your money into one product under your name, you were exceeding the limit by $50,000. If your bank didn't go out of business in this time period, then great - but you want to keep that in mind when you redeploy the money. Right away, you should divide up the cash that came due into two different kinds of accounts or move some of it to a different institution.
While not everyone is going to be dealing in six-digit CDs coming due, there are a lot of people in your situation now with their cash. You are part of a "term tsunami," as deemed by Financial Brand, which analyzes the banking market. We were in one of these back in 2024, with $950 billion set to come due to savers who heeded the call to lock in interest rates before they dropped.
In 2026, Financial Brand says, some "$2.37 trillion in bank CDs may move around the banking system this year."
If you bought into a 1-year CD in May 2025 that has now come due, you may have enjoyed a 4.5% interest rate, or even higher if you got a special deal. If you're looking at rates today to see your options, you're most likely looking at 4% or less, according to NerdWallet's CD tracker. You'd likely get about the same in the most aggressive high-yield savings accounts, and probably slightly less in money-market accounts. If your money is in a major bank savings account, you're probably making less than 1% on it.
Where will rates go from here? Your guess is as good as anyone else's. Signs had been pointing to interest rates dropping soon - but with the continued chaos with oil prices (CL00), they may stay steady or even rise.
You're in the middle of a classic example of what's called "reinvestment risk." We mostly think of fixed income as having no risk - but there are terms to these investments, and if they come due in a different rate environment than when you bought them, you may not like your options so much if rates are lower.
In your case, you certainly want to break things up at least enough to get under the FDIC limits. Then, you get to the question of where to put your money. One of your fellow readers recently asked: What should the ratio be between a taxable brokerage account and a high-yield savings account? There's no real rule of thumb for this, other than that it's always best to keep your immediate cash needs liquid in a high-yield savings account or money-market account. One smart strategy is to count out six months of expenses and sock that away, then line up more to keep depositing into that account as time rolls forward.
Another pro tip: Check your money-market account to see how the cash is actually invested. Another of your fellow readers had most of her cash at a major brokerage in a money-market account - as she said, "waiting for a market reset" - and she wanted to know how they had it structured. Was it all in T-bills, she wanted to know?
To get the answer, you have to go to your brokerage's online account-information page and click on the money-market position. Sometimes, people see a ticker symbol listed and think they're invested in stocks (which is one of the ways that people miss out on investing their IRA funds). Schwab's $(SCHW)$ main money-market fund has the ticker "SWVXX," for example, and is currently yielding 3.48%. Sometimes, however, the default is what's known as a "bank sweep," and that could yield much, much less.
For the rest of your money, you might want to take $10,000 and buy I-bonds from TreasuryDirect.gov, for one thing. Then, in a brokerage account, ladder some short-term CDs or Treasurys that will come due as you need them. After that, perhaps think about taking a portion of the cash that you know you won't need for a while and put it toward longer-term investments, like index funds.
The most important thing is to keep your money working for you as hard as it possibly can - and for that, you need to apply some elbow grease to keep it moving.
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-Beth Pinsker
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May 11, 2026 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)
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