You probably don't want to let all of that money
sit in a money market fund for too long, since the interest rate is not much more than 0 %.
Since your employer matches your contribution in a lump sum fashion, you could opt to park the
proceeds in a money market fund and periodically invest it on your own.
In a money market fund where the historical gross return might be 5 %, a 1 % expense ratio will consume approximately 20 % of the investor's historical total return.
Putting all your
savings in a money market fund and leaving them there typically isn't a good asset allocation strategy if you want that money to grow over time and fund your retirement.
The money I have on this side of the tax barrier is
in money market funds so I can get my hands on it for things like renovations.
You may decide that you're not taking any chances, and that the extra partial percentage point increase
in money market fund yields is not worth any risk of principal loss whatsoever.
On his advice, Margaret and Ben sold all of their stocks, bonds and mutual funds so that they now hold only
cash in a money market fund in their RRSPs.
But you may have encountered a problem where it wasn't always easy to meet the minimum deposits required to invest in some of the funds you want, which means that the end result was oftentimes that you'd have a portion of your money sitting
in a money market fund instead of your desired ETF.
My own evaluation of this is reflected in the fact that the majority of my personal assets are invested in the Strategic Growth Fund (nearly all the remainder, outside of a small
amount in money market funds, is in the Strategic Total Return Fund).
There is $ 2.7 trillion
in money market funds alone, plus another $ 9.1 trillion in bank deposits, like checking accounts and certificate of deposits (CDs)(source: Investment Company Institute (ICI) and Federal Reserve (Fed), as of 10/16/2017).
I park the initial contribution and the
CESG in a money market fund, which I then liquidate and buy four funds according to my asset allocation target (TD Canadian Bond Index eFund: 20 %, TD Canadian Index eFund: 20 %, TD US Index eFund: 35 %, TD International Index eFund: 25 %).
$ 1 million invested in index fund $ 1 million to purchase McDonald's franchise $ 1 million
in money market fund $ 1 million in precious metals $ 1 million in small apartments Money left over $ 25 million
My funds also languished
in this money market fund for many weeks, of the choices told to me, I picked 2, no contact from them telling me one fund was not really available, I had to contact them to ask why nothing was going into my chosen funds.
The downside of course is that if you need it you're selling shares and paying taxes, but the upside is that your money isn't being
underutilized in a money market fund gaining little interest.
But in the last few episodes of sharp stock market drops, bonds went up (US government bonds are a safe haven asset and appreciate in crisis periods) so the only thing better than 3 months worth of
expenses in a money market fund is having 3 + x months worth of expenses in the bond portfolio due to higher bond yields and negative correlation between bonds and stocks.
Some advocates of using your Roth IRA as an emergency fund counter that you should keep that part of your
IRA in a money market fund to guard against a loss like that.