Money you need 3, 5, 7 years from now

You have to remember any type of IRA account you're going to get your arse taxed if you pull it out unless it's a Roth.

Your best bet if you're going to plan and spend it is put it into some sort of savings account. Ideally one with a semi-decent interest rate, though they all pretty much suck right now.

As the poster above said, even getting .75% is better than what your checking or standard savings account will give you. I'd check out Barclay's, it's pretty much the best out there at 1% APY. No minimum and no fee required.

If you're already contributing to retirements, I'd put majority of your spare funds and hold it as cash.

This is something I have been looking into, and wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something.

I hate putting anything more than my "emergency" fund in savings because right now interest doesn't even keep up with inflation, so I was thinking about the following.

I know there is risk in putting the money into a mutual fund/stock market, but even the under performing ones would get ~3-5% returns, right? If you hold the funds for 3-7 years, you would only get taxed ~15% on the profits (Assuming it isn't an IRA)? Wouldn't this be better than letting your money devalue for 3-7 years in a savings account? Am I missing something?