Personal Investments • Help with low risk cash for nursing care

My father-in-law is currently in a skilled nursing facility and will be for the remainder of his life. Fortunately, he is on medi-cal and has secondary medical insurance through his state retirement package, so he doesn’t incur any costs for his stay. Nonetheless, we have hired private help for him 8 hours a day ($1100/week) as he is unable to feed himself, control the tv, take video calls from us, and speak with the nurses. When his wife passed, her irrevocable trust passed to my wife and I and remains in our revocable trust. We use this money for his care. It is $320k and currently invested in an Ally savings account earning 4.3%. Since it’s in our names, it’s being taxed at our income levels, which is roughly 22% fed, 9.3% California.

I’m trying to determine if there is a better way to squeak out a little more income without being risky. This money will probably last another 4-5 years, and it’s very doubtful he lives that long. Since not all the money is being used right away, I was thinking we could shift about half. Would doing a T-bill ladder allow us to skip on state taxes and generate a more favorable interest rate? I’d prefer to use Vanguard for the ladder. Can anyone explain how to purchase the tbills? I don’t understand the difference between auction and secondary. Would it make more sense to just use an ETF, like SGOV?

Thank you for your help.

Statistics: Posted by jjgaucho — Mon Mar 04, 2024 3:49 pm — Replies 0 — Views 28

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