How much cash do you have sitting on the sidelines?

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dobig

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There was a recent discussions about cash in regards to retirement but curious to see how much cash people are keeping on the sidelines with the current uncertainty? I'm at 22% but ready to deploy some.
 
That's a rather complicated answer. Are you talking about an emergency fund in cash, for things like roof repair, or are you talking about cash in a brokerage account or an IRA?
I am fully invested in my retirement accounts, but that does not count my emergency funds.
And frankly, uncertainty and confusion create fantastic opportunities for astute investors.
Every month I am increasing my income and the present market drop has been fantastic for income investors.
 
1.5%, but I have reasonably assured cashflow that is more than 2.5 times our expenses. So I feel no need to hoard cash to cover expenses.
As far as cash providing ballast or safety. My largest positions are market short/long funds which are up almost 10% YTD. So there are better options to buffer the bumps.
I am up YTD and close to my all time high.
 
cash poor and getting poorer by the invoice on the home build. It is all according to a plan of sorts. Nonetheless it can be a bit unnerving.
 
Invest when you have money, withdraw when you need it. Just that simple. I never have money on the sidelines.
 
66, retired 18 years. I cannot time the market at all, so 0.5 - 1% in cash (dividends piling up) since 1993, all the rest in equities.
 
About 9% of total investment portfolio sitting on the side lines. I have mentioned this here a handful of times but the 9% is more than enough to live life the rest of my time.
My plan was to live life from that cash account through thick and thin and not have to sell investments. So far it looks like that plan will work. I thought seriously when markets dropped a couple of weeks back to invest some of the cash while markets were low. I didn't, and may at some time, or stay on track with my initial plan.
 
I consider cash to be part of our asset allocation. There is no “sideline”. Money in cash is there on purpose, not because I’m waiting to invest it. That said, our AA currently is 18% cash and CDs which is about 5 years worth of spending.
 
I have 15% or 20% in money market or short term T-Bills and another 15% in series-I savings bonds.
 
Mine is in a checking/saving account I consider that account in my total portfolio. No CD's no MM's cash.
 
After today, $236.00 in my IRA. (made some purchases)

Brokerage account has ~$10,000 floating around due to a bond that was just called away! :mad:

In my ROTH, about $8.00.

About $800.00 in my house safe.

In the bank enough for this month's bills.

Otherwise, I am living on the edge.:cool:
 
I've got about $30k in my taxable account settlement fund and about $10k in my checking account.
I'm 95%+ into stock funds overall and I recently decided it would be better in my growing taxable account to target a fixed amount of cash, maybe $15,000 rather than 5%. Main reason being that I can TLH there, so it's not a problem...
 
We always keep $50K to $100K in our checking account to pay bills and our bills are lumpy, and the money is transferred over from our brokerage account (dividends) and IRA (RMD) as well as from SS and fixed income annutities payments.

We don't keep "spare" cash but have 20% of the IRA in MYGAs, between that and dividends, they are able to meet RMD amounts for rolling 5 years.

Basically we never need to sell anything in a down market. We do sell some positions in our brokerage accounts if we need more money, like getting a new car or home renovation.
 
Emergency fund: After our savings which were invested in stocks passed a certain amount (for us $50K+) we no longer have cash or emergency for over 3 decades and are now in retirement.
Do I really need an emergency fund? not really, first I use credit cards, if I can't, I have several thousand in the bank. Beyond that, I can sell my mutual funds and get the money within 2 days. Why would you have an emergency fund unless you buy illegal drugs or need it for a ransom?

CASH: Do you really need years of cash, even as a retiree? IMO, a retiree needs maybe 3-6 months at most. Most/all retirees have a cash flow from SS + distributions + pension + can sell something, which isn't difficult to sell 3-4 times per year. When stocks do better, you can sell stocks, when stocks lose, you can use bonds. Some of these bonds should be a ballast for stocks, which means in a market meltdown they will go up or have minimal losses. Bonds have different categories, risks, duration, and behavior such as treasuries, Munis, HY, bank loan, MBS, TIPS, emerging markets, and corp. Usually, over the longer-term hold, they will do better than money markets and CDs. You can sell your bond funds and see the money the next day in your account.
Exception: When money markets pay 4-5%, you can consider it as part of your safe bonds. Getting such a high monthly income with free risk/volatility is really good.
2022 was a unique year when both stocks and bonds lost money. Do you really want to own years of MM for decades now based on one year?

CASH for trading: I never understood this concept, and I'm a trader and not a typical investor. A typical investor has stocks+bonds. If stocks go down, and you want to buy more stocks, it's pretty easy to sell some bonds and buy stocks, so why be in cash for months-years making almost nothing?

The only exception for me happened after our portfolio was big enough, and I was several years before retirement. I added the max loss allowed rule to protect my portfolio. Since then, I've been in the market most time and invested at 99+%(less than 1% in cash). Only at extreme risk, I'm out.

How can a retiree create monthly cash flow? Pretty easy. She can use 1 (or more) funds and create a repeatable monthly sell order for the amount she needs for years to come. It takes about 2 minutes and there is nothing to do after that.
A more sophisticated retiree can sell 3-4 times annually the fund that made more money or from the account (taxable, IRAs) she likes to use. She has full control of what and how to do it.
BTW, if it's in a taxable account, you will pay more taxes on CEFs that have very high distributions, regardless if you need all of them.
 
12% which is quite a bit. This is in my investment portfolio not e-cash.

It is awaiting investment as I did some selling in the fall and have slowly been reinvesting.

But cash is a good asset now at 4.25% or so.

And it carries something I love: optionality.
 
We always try to have $50K in the checking acct. We have a couple of MYGAs (Roths) that add to maybe $200K.

Otherwise, I never have enough cash.
 
1 - 2 years spending.
 
10% in "cash" but that only means that it is easily accessible in a MM account earning 4%+.

It's where my dividends get dumped for eventual living expenses withdrawal or scooping up an opportunity.

We don't think in terms of "X years spending" as our dividends more than cover any eventuality. The challenge is that the dividend amount keeps growing beyond our needs.

I'm my own worst enemy in that regard for, when the pot gets too heavy, I'll take some cash and buy...more dividend payers. :facepalm:
 
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Currently only 17k in emergency funds, which is low for us, but as been mentioned there are other options.
On the higher side in investment cash, as still believe there is a largish market drop coming.
 
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