Seems like a good practice to never keep anything of significance on an exchange anyway, but I am assuming (speaking of only 3 figures) it is ok in a desktop wallet (Exodus).
The other thing I heard was to simply abstain from any BTC exchanges of any kind during the upcoming bitcoin rapids/fork in the river! Kinda makes sense, but I couldn't explain why!?
Yes a desktop wallet is way safer than an exchange. The problem with an exchange is you don't know the private key to your wallet and if they go down you are out of luck.