Thanks to record inflation…you can get that long sought after high-yield that you have been complaining about for years. A new record for I-Bonds.
It’s a great place to park money you don’t need for a few years.
I’ve got a few bonds but vast majority is still in stocks.
Inflation hasn’t affected KC at all, life has never been better under Biden than anytime in our countries history.
That’s great. My favorite part is that if I want to put $100k into something that might get me 6% over time, or could lose me 90% in the same period,it is hunky dory. If I want to money into something that will give me 9%, I can only invest $10,000.
Yep. My wife and I bought a bunch earlier this week.
How do you buy a bunch? Bought some in your grand kids names?
Set up an account for me and an account for my wife. Bought $10K for each.
ADventures in poor customer service. I had set up a Treasury Direct account a few months ago, so I thought I’d go in and buy some I bonds. But I didn’t have my account number. The “verification” was security overkill. One screen I had to enter my name,address, phone number, email, drivers license number, and social security number. Then next screen brought up 10 security questions and said “answer the ones you gave us”. But I don’t remember which ones I gave them. So they said answer them all. I did not have answers to all of them, and when I tried to answer the ones it could possibly be, the answers were blanked out so I couldn’t see if I was misspelling it. Further…I wasn’t sure what the acceptable format was…for example - favorite teacher…was it “Mr. Smith” or “Ed Smith” or just “Smith”. Was my favorite author Smith or John Smith. Didn’t matter, after 3 tries, my account was locked and I had to call a number, which I did this morning. The wait time is over 2 hours. And you didn’t have hold music…you have a damned phone ringing 8 to 10 times with the occasional “marketing message” and "we appreciate you holding’ message. Frustrating as HELL.
It’s challenging to be sure…same happened to me and got it cleared up once I called Treasury Direct. I emailed myself and saved the account number and password to avoid that in the future. (I know I’ve violated security protocol, anybody that can figure it out can have my 40 grand)
did you sit on hold for over two hours?
Not to rub it in but I think I was off the phone in 5 minutes, maybe I called when they first opened. I seem to recall that I didn’t pass the security question protocol perfectly but guess I sounded trustworthy on the phone.
It takes 10 minutes to even get to the call tree.
I just looked up my $10, 000 in I-Bonds bought in 2001, now worth over $28,000. The current interest rate is 10.30% and has earned $844 in interest YTD.
My kid has 16 $1,000 I-Bonds, 4 bought in 2001 and the rest are $2,000 a year over the next 10 years, plus a couple extra. I think banks stopped selling paper bonds so the grand parents just gave cash we deposited in his savings account. He knows he has bonds but no idea what they’re worth.
Edited to add…my wife also has a big stack of EE bonds she had from when she first started working, she cashed around $12,000-$15,000 that stopped earning interest to pay my kids college tuition.
MOre adventures in customer service. Tried calling Treasury Direct at 7:30 central time. Two hour or longer wait. They close at 5:30. I called again at 1 (2 Eastern time) and the message said that they are not longer accepting any calls due to the backlog and it being “so close” to closing time. 3.5 hours.
I’m sending them a letter via snail mail (they won’t accept email unless it was generated from your account) with some suggestions they might consider, such as taking a number and calling back (as many other government and private entities do). I also gave them some suggestions of stupid things like - putting some of the actual security questions I answered up there. I guess I just miss out on this. IT’s kind of bullshit.