If I wanted to sock away some funds in a wallet for a future purchase, what coin is the best choice?
Stable coin is nice like nonyabizznez said as you won't need to worry about the value fluctuating but not sure if their experience is sending from wallet or some other service like exchange or app..
Using stables from a wallet may introduce some complexities you may not be ready to deal with yet..
From what i've seen from the vendors they seem to like BTC, LTC, Sol, and USDT and perhaps USDC. the difference between the first 3 and the last two (the stable coins) is that the stable coins run on Ethereum network so will require some ETH to be also in your wallet to pay the gas fee's to send them.
I'm not saying on an investment level that ETH is a bad buy, it is about to surprise the world shortly, but the user experience is very annoying. As the fee's (in ETH) range from highish to insultingly high. (anytime the network gets busy, like if the price is making a move up or down)
Here's the scenerio newer crypto user's may want to avoid..
You buy USDT or USDC at exchange (or an app) and want to send to wallet, (make sure you send out on correct network or you have bigger problems)
you send it to your wallet.. the fee kinda sucked but it arrived. Now you try to send out of wallet but you can not because you have no ETH in the wallet to pay for another sucky fee..
Your stable coins are now hostage..
solution: you must go back to exchange and buy some ETH.. (make sure it's enough to pay a higher than expected fee in case the network get busy while you are doing all this)
pay another sucky fee to send it to your wallet. now you've earned the right to pay another sucky fee to send your stable to whoever.
Many may not be expecting this as sending things off exchanges is done seemlessly paying the fee to exchange in whatever you are sending.
To avoid this just stick with BTC, LTC, or Sol as they pay their fees in themselves so no need to bother (as much) about networks and (at all) about seperate currencies to pay fees.
I'd go with BTC personally Litecoin and Solana are more volitile on price while Bitcoin more stable, and since you mention storing some for future, BTC has better odd's to be worth more when you go to use it, having turned you a profit, and perhaps starting you on another great transformative journey towards personal financial freedom and a truely grand retirement one day. Hope this helps. Good luck!