I bought my bonds in December/January 21/22. If I’m understanding this correctly, the 7.12 will continue until May/June before changing to 9.62, and then that will continue until Dec/Jan again regardless of the next rate change?
That’s right, except it’s June/July not May/June and…oh, I missed this bit. The rates always change on the first of the month. So it depends only on what month you bought it, not when in the month you bought it. The chart is here:
https://www.treasurydirect.gov/indiv/research/indepth/ibonds/res_ibonds_iratesandterms.htm#change
Jeez, I’ve been trying to log into TreauryDirect since Sunday, and I keep getting “not available”* after jumping through three log-in hoops. Lots of interest in these bonds.
*Except Tuesday, when they were down for scheduled maintenance.
I created my Treasury Direct account yesterday, and today I purchased $10,000 of I Bond. I didn’t experience any delay or downtime in creating the account. The Treasury Direct website is a bit clunky, but doable.
Yours are probably Series EE, which are fixed-rate.
Nope. I bought them back in '99 or '00, when the real rate was 3.4% or 3.6%, I can’t remember. Cite. (PDF)
Yes there are two rate components to I bonds that combine to give you the effective rate. One rate remains the same as at time of purchase the other changes every six months.
I figured out my login problem: when the site shows you picture of a keyboard to log in, you must click on the virtual keyboard to enter your password. If you use your actual keyboard, you get the “TreasuryDirect is unavailable” page.
$10k I-Bond purchased.
This morning the amount appeared in my Treasury Direct account, but my bank’s checking account has yet to show a debit of that amount. I’ll have to call them later today to see what’s up.
And I had this issue at Treasury Direct: when logging in, I copied and pasted my account number off of my password sheet into the TD website, and got that unavailable message. Then I went back and typed the number in instead, and got in with no problems.
Not a great website. But I’ll eventually get it worked out.
Hmm, I seem able to paste my account number when logging in. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I checked and I now have a $10k bond in my account and my bank has been debited that amount. Out of curiosity I tried to figure out how I would cash my bond on that web site, and I’m darned if I can noodle it. Well, I’ve got a year or more to figure that out.
Go to “Current holdings”. Select the radio button next to “Series I savings bonds” and click “submit”. It will take you to a page listing all the I bonds you own. Select the radio button next to the one you want to cash and click “select”. That will take you to a page with information about that bond (maturity date, current value, etc). At the bottom there’s a button labeled “redeem”.
As someone noted earlier, Series I bonds are taxable at the federal level. So you’re very likely to be losing money after inflation. (Especially since the fixed rate component of that bond is currently 0%.) Though of course, you might lose even more with other investments.
But it’s not like you’re locked in against inflation. To the contrary, you’re pretty much locked in to lose money to inflation, after taxes, just not as much as if you let it sit in a savings account. And you’re not as exposed to the downside market risk as in a more high yielding investment.
Nice. Thank you!
It seems like it is more efficient to post here than to start a new thread but if I’m wrong, a mod can tell me.
I went to check out the treasury direct website and I note at the bottom of one of the pages that it tells me that the site is best used with Internet Explorer. Really?
Still, many of you have successfully logged on but before I try to do so I have a question that maybe someone can answer. (For the record I did try to submit this through their “contact us” page, but I got back an auto-generated email that said that they were only responding to emails from people who have accounts!)
I live in a community property state and all of our bank accounts are in both our names. Treasury direct shows me three ways I can register a bond. One is for myself, one is for myself POD my spouse, and the third is me “with” my spouse. Their help page isn’t helpful on this question, implying that “with” might be equivalent to an “or” allowing either of to cash it.
If I create a bond and register it in any of these ways, because the funds are being drawn from a joint account, will the treasury reject a subsequent application if my wife wanted to create an account and purchase a bond using the same bank account that mine was drawn on?
I’m not saying we will invest a second amount, but I’m not sure how to go about doing this the best way.
I don’t recall making a decision on the with/POD/etc question. But both my wife and I have separate Treasury Direct accounts associated with a single bank account. That was not a problem for us.
Same here. We both used the same money market account to purchase the bonds.
Good to know. Thank you both.
Probably should have done this when the thread was new…
I’m planning to buy some TIPS from the upcoming 7/21 auction. Is there any reason to prefer buying on TreasureDirect instead of through my brokerage account?
The TreasuryDirect account is already setup, and will suck the money from my brokerage anyway, but at the moment it is empty. My brokerage does not have any trading fee for government bonds, so that doesn’t matter.
The only substantive difference is TreasuryDirect sells in $100 increments, but my brokerage sells in $1000 increments. That doesn’t matter to me for this trade. Buying through my brokerage also lets me buy them through my IRA, but that also isn’t important for this trade.
It shouldn’t matter, either way. At least TreasuryDirect does not charge for their services.
So when do these bonds reprice again? November?