Ask HN: I have $450K cash, what should I do to maximize my return?
Cash out refi everything you can.  At 3%, 30 year fixed, with fed target inflation rates of 2-3%, you’ll need a < 1% real return to make money on the transaction (ignoring fees).<p>If you can’t get that with passive investments over the next 30 years, the banks will have bigger problems than your loan.<p>Despite your risk aversion, consider putting some in a robo advisor (mix of bonds, index, foreign index, etc), to hedge against a spike in inflation, or a crash of just the US economy. The dollar has been falling recently.  The robo will auto rebalance as the economic climate shifts.<p>As for the cash holding, you can at least get 0.35% at Wealthfront in a cash account.  (Does anyone know of a higher return cash account?)<p>Bond yields are slightly higher, but not much these days.<p>I’m in a similar position, and am also betting on a crash soon.<p>I have been putting 2-5% into a robo every few weeks (when the market flinches).  It’s been a bad strategy (I should have gone all in a month or so ago), but it’s better than 100% cash.  If the market hasn’t crashed in a year or so, I’ll be all in.<p>I bet against the market for most of the Obama administration (because the bailout / zero interest rates didn’t seem sustainable).  Clearly, that was a mistake.<p>You can’t beat the fed, and right now, the fed is printing unlimited money to prop up ETFs and issuers of junk bonds.  Also, investors are holding record amounts of cash, and are slowly putting it back into the market in seek of yields.<p>Good luck.