US Savings Bonds

Posts Tagged ‘Savings Bonds’

Question: United States Savings Bonds?

My parents had gotten like 10 Savings Bonds for their god child. Well these Savings Bonds were to be sent to my parents, because it was under theirs and the god childs name. Then we would send it to the god child. These savings bond would be sent to us like once every month or so. well we ended up giving the god child about 7 of the 10. they moved and we had the three. Well we have been going through a little financial trouble and we wanted to cash in the 3 Savings Bonds that we had. the thing is we lost them. Is there anyway we can get them back without affecting the 7 that our god child has. I know the government has a website for it and i requested a form i just wanted to know if we could cash just 3 without taking our god childs 7?

Answer: Yes the website that you need to visit is www.treasurydirect.gov. If you click on the link to “contact” you should find some phone numbers and emails.

Call the people at the treasury department. They will have records of your ownership of the Savings Bonds in electronic form. You should have no problem locating and selling your treasury bonds. I’m not sure if they will need to transfer the bonds (electronically) to a brokerage firm or not. I know you can buy treasuries directly from treasurydirect.com. But in order to sell them again you will probably have to sell them on the open market. You will need a Broker-Dealer to handle that transaction.

Good Luck!

GGN- Economic News :: November 5, 2010

Question: What investment would be best? We have $4K for our emergency fund–$ needs to be liquid but earn interest?

We have $4,000 we want to keep reasonably liquid as an emergency fund but we’d like to earn the best interest on it that we can without risking losing the principal. The stock market is out–too risky for us. Savings Bonds are not liquid enough for us plus interest is not that good. Interest on T-bills is not that good either. Seems like CDs or money market are the only real options…with CDs perhaps being the better of the two options for us. Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Answer: Put the money into an internet bank. They pay as much interest as a CD would, but you can get the money anytime you need it. There are no fees, which you would have to pay if you put the money into a money market fund. It is also very easy to transfer money in and out of the account. For more on this including links to internet banks, click on http://www.vilkri.com/pubreader.php?page=internet_bank

Corruption in America’s Banks 1/3

Question: Can an old college debt be tax deductible?

This year I had to pay my old university back for the classes I took because I transfered to a new university. I could not get my transcipts sent to the new school until I sent them payment in full. I was unable to get a loan to pay for this so I cashed in some Savings Bonds and withdrew some money from my 401k. Is there anyway to off-set the penalties and interest that I encured since this was a school debt? I do have additional expenses for my new school already listed. Thanks!

Answer: In order to avoid the 10% penalty on the 401k withdrawal, the withdrawal has to be less than your qualified educational expenses. So it seems that you are exempt from the penalty. Attach Form 5329 to your return.

Tax on the savings bond interest may be excludible as well. Use Form 8815 to figure the exclusion and attach it to your return.

If there are additional educational expenses that were not paid with the 401k withdrawal or the Savings Bonds, you may be able to take a deduction or credit for those expenses.

Sandy Aitken