Remember Savings Bonds?
A buyer recently cashed in years of Savings Bonds to invest in gold and silver. His conversion of the bonds was trying, to say the least. His experience is reported below.
Cashing my Savings Bonds was interesting. I first tried to redeem the bonds at the credit union where I have my checking and savings account and learned that they stopped redeeming savings bonds two years ago.
I then went to a Fifth Third Bank near my house and got to the counter at five minutes after 5:00 EST and found out that they can’t redeem after 5:00 because the Treasury is closed. (I am curious if people in California or Hawaii can redeem any bonds in the afternoon if the Treasury closes at 5:00 EST.)
I went back to Fifth Third the next day and was told they don’t redeem anything above $1,000 for non-account holders.
I then went to TCF National Bank. They redeemed the bonds, but it took almost 45 minutes for the teller to go through the redemption process.
Don’t let anybody tell you that a US Bond is a good as cash because it is unlikely he can get the cash without a runaround. Pieces of paper are moving closer to being worth nothing.
[Note: Although a US Treasury website says that “many local” financial institutions redeem paper bonds, the site also says that they can be sent to the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis for redemption. No information on how long that would take.]
