re: What’s the best place to put $2,000?

If your job is fairly stable, double purpose your money.

Open a Roth (I like Vanguard) and put it in a diverse mutual fund. I use VWELX for this purpose.

You get tax shielding, you get investment growth, and you get penalty free withdrawal of your contribution.

If allowed to grow for a couple of years, it will have grown enough to offset needing to withdraw in a market downturn resulting in a loss.

People who advocate having six months of cash lying around (the work of multi years to build) before starting to put into things like CDs are giving advice better suited to the 1980s.

The biggest thing you need to concern yourself with is the risk that you’ll need the money immediately after initial investment.

So I would save hard for 4500 cash, open aforementioned account with 3500 keeping 1000 in reserve for emergencies.

Then add money as you can to the Roth. After a few years of this, the Roth will be sufficiently “seasoned” to mitigate much of the risk to market volatility in an emergency.

In short, you’ll have a significant egg if you need it, and every year you don’t results in significantly can’t gains as opposed to one sitting there losing value as you have to add money occasionally to offset inflation due to weak interest rates.