=

Update: got a reply from a rep at the savingsbonds site regarding i-bond rates: "The fixed rate is selected by the Treasury after reviewing economic conditions. The Secretary of the Treasury has the final approval, and there is no formula or equation to determine what the fixed rate will be."

So it is indeed discretionary. It will be interesting to see if they use their discretion to bump the base rate back up to 3% or 2.5% next time.

If you buy $100 FACE VALUE of ee bond, you'll be charged $50. Then you can redeem them 6 cycles later for slighly over $50, i.e. they won't reach their face value for many years.

Does anyone know how long it takes for a savingsbondsdirect order to post to the credit card? I ordered some last Friday, and still no indication of the order has appeared on my account.

do they post to credit card on the first or second email?

This is really strange. I just received the actual savings bonds in the mail(10 days after initial order), and yet the transaction still has not posted to my credit card.

Interesting indeed.

According to this, limits don't apply if you redeem in same calandar year as purchased. So June i-bonds, which can be bought through 6/29, would be unlimited if redeemed by December of this year.

Still, would the web site let you buy an unlimited amount? Doubtful.

Did you see a similar provision for the EE bonds?

DH, I finally found the links to show that same holds true for EE bonds. Please see the Sec. 351.4 in combination with Sec. 353.11.

This does look promising .

sunrise, I'd be really surprised if they sold you more than the yearly limit in any single month -- I wouldn't even try it. Moreover, I wouldn't want to own more than $30K of the 2002 I-bonds or more than $15K of the 2002 EE-bonds at any given time. That being sad, I think the right strategy would be to do something like this:

Buy the yearly limit in January --> redeem everything on July 1st --> buy the yearly limit again at the end of July --> repeat next year.

I'm sure that the creative folks here at FW can come up with another similar or better strategy, but I believe that the trick for not raising any questions is not to own more than the yearly limit at any given time, otherwise I think it's asking for trouble.

So as a conclusion, I think that this can open the door for legally purchasing (e.g. running through your rewards CC ) TWICE the yearly $45K limit. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

Today (June 27) is the last day to buy bonds dated June.