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A tax free money market fund is a good mode to balance your portfolio particularly if it is equity heavy. In existing economic situation, there is a lot of uncertainty. So, it makes sense to put some money in debt funds like government securities and money market funds.

A money market fund is essentially a mutual fund which puts its assets in short term debt instruments. These instruments are usually like cash or cash equivalent securities. These money market mutual funds are commonly used as short term investments till the time you are able to find a better option to invest your money. This is specially a good alternative in current scenario when the investors are waiting for the markets to improve. Once there is upswing in the market, this money can be withdrawn from money market funds and put back in equity.

There are different types of money market instruments in which money can be invested. These include commercial paper, U.S. Treasuries, Certificate of deposits, repurchase agreement etc. The money market funds are available in two flavors which are taxable funds and tax free funds. As you can make out, the difference between the two flavors is the way tax is deducted. The taxable funds are taxed during maturity while the tax free money market funds are exempted from tax.

At an initial look, no-one will decide to buy a taxable fund because to tax related reasons but the fact is that tax free funds have fewer yields than taxable funds. When comparing these funds, it is necessary that investor convert the tax free yield into equivalent taxable yield. The formula for this conversion is Taxable Equivalent Yield = Tax-Free Yield / (1 – Marginal Tax Rate).

There are a variety of tax free money market funds existing in market today. Most of them have similar returns so there is not much difference between them. A few names from good and reputed fund houses are Fidelity AMT Tax-Free Money Fund (FIMXX), Vanguard Tax-Exempt MMF (VMSXX), American Century Tax-Free MMF (BNTXX), and T. Rowe Price Tax-Exempt Money (PTEXX).

The author writes articles on various topics related to personal finance including best tax free money market funds and money market certificates.

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