If you're buying a piece of real estate, whether it's your home to live in or an investment property,

you're probably going to have to save up a lot of cash for the down payment, for repairs, and other costs. And the question is, what do you do with all that cash during those months or those years that you're saving the money before you buy the property? As someone who's been buying hundreds of properties over the last 20 years, I've got a lot of experience going through this process.

So in this edition of Ask Coach, I'm going to share with you some of my ideas of the best places

to put your money to save for your next property. And we're getting started right now.

If we haven't met yet, my name is Chad Carson.

You can also call me Coach, and this channel is all about helping you get out of the financial grind,

so you can do more of what matters.

In the Ask Coach series, it's where I do my best to answer your burning questions about personal finance and real estate.

The first advice I have about saving up for a down payment is where not to put the money.

And that includes the stock market, that includes mutual funds and index funds, that includes

cryptocurrencies or any other investment that has the potential to go down very quickly.

As tempting as it might be to try to turn a small amount of money into a large amount of money

by timing the market and investing in riskier assets.

That's really not the game you want to play here. If you think about it, the main engine for helping

you save money for a down payment is your job or maybe a side hustle, some way to generate

some income and then you spending maybe a little bit less and you can build up that cash and

whatever vehicle you decide to put it in. And the number

one criteria that you're looking for is safety. You don't want that money to go away so that you

can sleep tonight knowing that tomorrow when you wake up, that money's still going to be there.

That's the number one criteria. The number two criteria is just having it be convenient and accessible.

So when you need the money, being able to get it pretty

quickly and be able to use it to buy a property when the opportunity comes along. Those are the first

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