Free $1,300 Easter Egg for You Savers
April 17, 2022
This post will be short and sweet. If you have $20,000 lying around in a savings account, go invest it in an I Bond. It’s a 30 year US government bond that pays you a tiny premium plus inflation, and the interest rate adjusts every 6 months. Since inflation registered near 8.5% this past month, the next adjustment will be a doozy. You’ll be able to lock in a 8.37% near risk free interest rate if you purchase it before the end of April.
Caveats: first, you can’t cash it in for 1 year, so will definitely be invested for a year, and second, if you cash it in before 5 years, you will lose 3 months of interest.
You can only invest a maximum of $10,000 per individual and $20,000 per married couple.
Still, think of it as a near-risk free 1 year CD of 6.3% (assuming you cash it in after a year and incur the interest penalty). Fortunately, I Bonds are also only taxed by the Fed and not the state so that’ll ease the pain.
Here’s some more details from CNBC.
Purchasing from Treasury Direct (link in that CNBC article above) means buying directly from the US government so this is “legit”.
Happy Easter readers, and enjoy the “free” money.
Please hit the “like” button below if you enjoyed reading the article, thank you.
It's a good opportunity, but the investment cap presents a bit of a paradox. For those with capital bases small enough to where a 10-20k investment is more than a rounding error - they actually need to focus on returns far in excess of 8% (like oil equities). For those that are already wealthy where a sure 8% doesn't sound so bad, a 20k investment just won't move the needle.