My wife and I are selling our house and will have about $22,000 that we want to save. Our plan is to rent a house for 1 year too see what the housing market does in CA and buy a house. Where can I put the $22,0000 so that it can make us money while it's just sitting there? What is a safe place to put it. I've thought about savings accounts but even after 1 yr we would only get around $400 extra in interest. Is there some sort of safe stock option or something we can invest it in and gain a few thousand?

~ I would check out the intrest rates on Money Market CD's.....other than that,,,,hmmm,,,,,under the mattress is what I would do.........

Money market fund (this is not the same thing as a money market account).

How about starting your own business? Buy a chunk of land and then later sell it to developers for a huge profit. Use the money to "flip" houses.

I would go for a money market account. Most of them are FDIC insured, which means that even if the bank goes bust, the government insures your account balance. This means that they are a super safe investment. They also have higher interest rates than plain vanilla bank savings accounts, but you can pretty much withdraw your money at any time as you could with a bank acount, so you won't be stuck if you need the money down the road. I use ING Direct- it's very easy to set up an account online, and their rates are pretty high. You should be getting something in the 5% range right now. You can shop for a good rate at www.bankrate.com.Good luck!

Just like every one else here, I recomend a money market for safety reasons.Try to get the highest paying account, check this web site they were recomended by the money talk show on the radiothey are a good source of information on banks