TreasuryDirect Review

Back in 1991 (doesn't it seem like a century ago!) I signed up to buy a $100 savings bond every month when I was still working at the Bank.  $25 was taken out of each bi-monthly paycheck and BINGO another savings bond would arrive in the mail.  Like most automatic deduction things, I forgot about it after a while.  Then the stock market got on a roll and money began to pour into my 401K plan.  I got quite swept away by the glamour of it all and began to refer to my Series EE Savings Bonds as my "dumb investment."  "What a dumb investment these bonds are!" I would mutter to the person at the next desk.  "I wonder where that form is that we can use to contact Payroll and have the deductions stopped" but by that time, inertia had already set in and I would let the bonds program live another month, and then another.  Quietly, the bonds began to stack up in little piles here and there, and then ...

Fortunately for me, more than ten years elapsed before I finally got organized enough to obtain a form to fill in to send to Payroll to stop my monthly purchase of bonds.  In my last push before retirement, I wanted to focus everything I had on the 401K program.  By that time, I had a stack more than an inch thick of what I still considered to be my dumb investment.  I was advised by an anxious co-worker that perhaps my unlocked tote bag drawer at my office desk was not the best place for these valuable documents and so I moved them into my safe deposit box.  But first, I wanted to make a list for myself of each bond's serial number, date of purchase, and other information saved in a place where even I couldn't lose it. 

Enter:  the Savings Bond Calculator.

The Calculator was a government website into which I could load my entire inventory of bonds and each bond's pertinent information.  I forget what THAT website was called but everything has been updated and improved and today we have ...

TreasuryDirect.gov

Cut to the chase and go directly to TreasuryDirect.gov/BC/SBCPrice and you will find yourself in the Savings Bond Calculator Page.  Following the directions, enter the information about each of your savings bonds and save your inventory.  If you have a lot of bonds, this may take a while and seem a tad tedious but when it is done you will have a record of all the bonds you own and that's when the fun starts.  Now as each new month rolls in, you can access the Savings Bond Calculator, type in a new redemption date (i.e. 04/2008), hit "Update" and BINGO! up comes the new current value of each bond and the amount of interest it has earned, including total heading amounts for "Purchase Price", "Total Value", "Total Interest", and "YTD Interest".   Having information like this could be a Godsend if you need to calculate your assets and find your net worth in preparation for applying for a loan or mortgage and whoever inherits your bonds someday would bless you for this handy source of information.  Besides all that, it is FUN. 

I have decided to let my bonds each run for the 25 extra years after maturity so the odds are that I probably won't be the ultimate beneficiary of my unaccustomed thrift and good sense but I can still get a little kick out of signing into the calculator every month, changing the date, and hitting "Update."  As the years go by and the power of compound interest begins to kick in, I must say that if someone was sitting at a desk next to mine now, I would have to admit that those Series EE Savings Bonds weren't such a dumb investment after all.