Making money with money

[MQualls22]

Im currently deployed in Iraq, I figured by the time I leave here Ill have around $20,000 bucks saved up. I will have around a year left in the military when I get home. What would be some good things to do with the money I saved so that I can make more money off of it?

[kork13]

How long do you still have in Iraq? If it's more than a month or so, one option you might look into is the Savings Deposit Program. It allows you to deposit (via pay withholding) up to $10k per deployment, and you earn 10% on the money until 90 days after the last day of your deployment.

Do you have any investments or retirement accounts (TSP, IRA's, etc.)? If not, this would be a good time to put some money towards those, as they are significantly depressed right now (meaning you're basically buying the shares at a discount). Once the markets eventually come back up, you'll stand to see fairly nice returns.

If you're looking to have it be more liquid (readily available), you might look at one of the many high-yield online savings accounts. Depending on what rates are looking like when you get back, another option might be to put some of the money into CD's, but those rates are currently quite low (below 2% for 6-month CD's, below 4% for 5-yr CD's).

[MQualls22]

I have about 8 months left I think if not a little sooner. I currently have like $1000 going into a savings deposit account every two weeks. I made a big mistake of blowing through like 8,000 while I was on leave in Europe. But ive started over saving again. Ill look into the cd's and ira's n stuff. Thanks!

[MaxPowers]

I am deployed to Djibouti, Africa. I had basicaly the same questions. Do you have an IRA yet? If not, thats something you would want to start and contribute regularly to.
One sure way is a high yield checking account. The one I have has 5%, but requires 10 purchases a month. Not to hard, I just buy 10 things of candy a month or something.
Look at the sticky about online savings accounts.

[snafu]

Before making investment decisions you need to think about segmenting your savings. Many investment decisions are based on how much time you can leave savings in a money making instrument.

A general rule of thumb is money you will want to use in less than 5 yrs., needs to be kept quite liquid [savings, money market, CDs] 5+ years could be mutual funds, bonds, stock market depending on your RISK tolerance. You will need to do some research because there are a lot of commission only salespeople out there trying to get your money to benefit them more than it benefits YOU.