An opportunity in I bonds
The next two weeks are an unusually opportune time to buy Series I Savings Bonds, both the Wall Street Journal and Savings Bond Advisor say. If you buy before May 1, you’ll earn 4.28 percent for the next six months. The rate is adjusted twice a year for inflation — and yesterdays’ Consumer Price Index report means that the next adjustment will be push the rate on these bonds to 6.06 percent. As Savings Bond Advisor points out:
These are much higher rates than are available in bank CDs or even other US Treasury securities.
Here’s why it’s important to act quickly: The I bonds’ interest rate has two parts, a fixed rate and an inflation component. The fixed rate currently is 1.2 percent, and it’s locked in for the life of the bond. New bonds sold after May 1 are likely to carry a much lower fixed rate.
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David Nicklaus has covered St. Louis business for more than 25 years. His column appears three days a week on the Post-Dispatch business page. 
Of course, the other side of this story, viewed from the perspective of U.S. taxpayers overall, is that the Treasury selling bonds paying above-market interest rates increases future government expenditures, thereby creating the need for higher taxes in the future to pay them. Just another example of how there may be a free lunch for some individuals, but not for society as a whole!
It won’t cost taxpayers much. The Treasury slashed the annual purchase limit of savings bonds by one-sixth as of 2008. For I Bonds, the most one person can purchase in one calendar year is $10,000 ($5,000 online and $5,000 paper).
I’d rather have savings bonds increasing future taxes than an endless war creating higher the taxes indefinitely. This government is poor at saving money and great at spending it…even money we don’t have. The savings bond program should be an insturment for encouraging personal saving, and savers should be rewarded for doing so.