Ibonds

[Anonymous No.49727929]

/biz/bros, anyone have any experience with Ibonds?

Any pitfalls or downsides?

[Anonymous No.49727987]

1. As far as I know they're only US.
2. Basically a gift from the gov to the plebs
3. Max 10k per year

[Anonymous No.49728329]

>>49727929
Only 10k per bond. Not sure if that means you can buy multiple 10k bonds. Safe but 10% a year on 10k isn’t much

[Anonymous No.49728335]

>>49727929
yes
terrible idea right now, bad idea in general
i-bonds lock you in for the duration and they have separate fixed and floating portions of the rate they pay you
the treasury is all but guaranteed to fuck you by adjusting the floating rate
they use any measure of the CPI that they want, and can change that decision at any time, to get the adjustment they want for the next round of floating-rate-portion payments
current fixed rate portion is 0%
the entire fucking thing is free-floating and it's several points below the real inflation rate by any sane measure, such as import/export prices

[Anonymous No.49729441]

>>49728335
Fudding and giving false information. Why though? The gov is the one who pays for it.

[Anonymous No.49729489]

>>49729441
who pays the government?

[Anonymous No.49729613]

I was about to buy them to make up part of my emergency fund, but there are just too many things going against them.

To start with, TreasuryDirect is an absolute fucking nightmare. Upon registering, my account was immediately locked and required a paper form with a Signature Guarantee stamp to be sent in the mail. Getting one of these stamps if you bank online is fucking impossible, as NO retail brokerage is willing to do this for you and getting a bank manager kind enough to do so when you don't have any accounts with them is probably harder than the average 4chan poster to get laid on Tinder. With all the sudden popularity of these things, it took over and entire month for my case to be opened and processed. You can easily be locked out of the website again if you fuck up your login info, forcing you to sit on the phone with wait times for the call center exceeding 3 hours. People have only been able to call in after waiting one hour by dialing EXACTLY when the support center opens at like 6 in the morning.
Following that, to actually get the full 9.62% return, you have to keep the bonds there for a full year, after which you have to wait an additional three months so that the interest penalty only applies to the interest accrued beyond that 9.62%. This means that if you were planning on making ibonds part of your emergency fund, you would already need 15 months-worth in other places before you can finally earn a piddly $962 on $10k pre-tax. With rapidly rising interest rates, the advantage over other low-risk places to keep that money is quickly being erased.

Ultimately I'm not sure if I'm going to bother with it. If I want a good return I would rather put that money in stocks now that they're selling at a big discount, or if stocks are overvalued I would either keep the money liquid or prepay my mortgage to reduce overall risk

[Anonymous No.49729623]

>>49727929
>Must hold for 1 year
>if cashed in prior to 5 years, you lose 3 months of interest
>can't be exchanged on the market
>can only buy $10k a year

Solid savings vehicle, IMO. Key word: SAVINGS. Good spot to put a down payment or any other amount you have saved/are saving up now and will use a couple years from now.

Other perks/quirks:
>interest gained monthly, compounded bi-annually
>no state tax
>only federal tax on interest, when you cash it in

[Anonymous No.49729913]

>>49729441
this poster literally cannot understand TD's own documentation, where all of that information is from
avoid i-bonds until the country is fixed and the government consistently runs a surplus again

[Anonymous No.49729949]

>>49729613
>With all the sudden popularity of these things,
it's astroturf and retards

[Anonymous No.49729988]

>>49729489
Isn't the point to control the consumer behavior that drives inflation by temporarily keeping that money out of the economy?
Locking people into a bond for at least a year and up to five years where the return is always somewhat less than actual inflation ought to drive down spending while allowing the government to pay back the interest. The interest also adjusts over time, so as inflation decreases, the return decreases.

[Anonymous No.49731463]

>>49729949
idk but when lots of people try to rush to some particular asset it's probably a good idea to be contrarian about it

(in case someone here is wondering yes crypto was that)

[Anonymous No.49731893]

>>49729988
Ladder your emergency fund in em. Beats any savings account you can get.

[Anonymous No.49731936]

What's an ibond, apple's version of a gayer and more restrictive bond?

[Anonymous No.49732138]

>>49729913
You aren't locked in. They can cash out after 1 year, too long for you to wait zoom zoom?