Why U.S. Treasury Securities are the Safest Investment
Bills, Notes, Bonds, series EE savings Bonds, and series I savings Bonds are all among the absolute safest investment options.
Treasury Bills/Notes/Bonds are marketable securities. Where savings Bonds can only be held or redeemed, the marketable securities can be traded on the open market…kind of like stocks. Kind of.
I have no idea what trading Treasury Securities looks like on something like Schwab or Fidelity - I can’t afford to buy 10-100 at a time. I’m also unsure as to whether or not Treasury Direct (treasurydirect.gov) lets you buy/sell via their website. I tried to check, but got locked out from entering incorrect user information too many times. All I have to do is call the number provided, but I hate talking on the phone. Sounds like a problem for Thursday (today is Monday, and tomorrow I’m getting stoned and playing video games).
More importantly, this specific article is only meant to do one thing - explain why US Treasury Securities are the safest, most secure, investment in history. A lot safer and more secure than our elections, that’s for sure. (Oh please, get over it. These things have been rigged since the very beginning. Not my fault “They” were mad at Hilary and decided to have her lose in 2016.)
“But Rocky!”, you say, “I skipped right down to this part because I don’t want to read your non-sense!”
Good on you! I’d of done the same.
Treasury securities are safe investments because there’s zero risk. Why is there zero risk? They’re backed by the faith and good word of the US Government. What more can you possibly want? The government can’t go bankrupt, it can’t be part of a merger, it can’t get bought out (again), and it can’t be sold to foreign investors (ehhh, we’re pushing it with this one).
The Point Is This - In order for Treasury Securities to fail, the US Government has to fail.
I don’t mean fail at budgeting, or at social welfare reform, or at evacuating the military from Afghanistan. I mean, the government of the United States would have to cease to exist.
Let me tell you, something, Mister (or Misterette, as the case my be) - if the United States government collapses and the dollar becomes worthless/ceases to exist, then you’ve got a lot bigger problems to worry about than whether or not you’ll be able to redeem your bonds when they mature!
Some people will suggest that holding bonds that carry a lower interest rate than is presently available is the same as a loss. I get what they’re saying, in that we’d see a larger return by redeeming our securities and reinvesting the principal at a higher rate… That’s kind of a lot of work. We’re not institutional buyers, either. If anything, I’d say just buy 13-week bills and automatically reinvest. Seems like the way to do it.
Again, though, we’re not getting into all that jazz in this article. All you need to know is that US Treasury Securities won’t make your money disappear. That being said, your actual returns are going to be ass…but maybe not for long. We’ll have to see how far interest rates go up this year, but as it is right now, the government is paying ass interest on their Notes, Bonds, etc.
Except for Series I savings Bonds. Those are being issued at 7.12% interest (roughly the same average return as index-fund investing). 7% guaranteed return ain’t bad.
While we’re at it…Series EE bonds are currently being issued at 0.01% return or something like that. Maybe 0.1%. Ridiculously low, in any case. However, after 20 years, you can redeem the bond for DOUBLE its face value. This comes out to like 5% guaranteed return.
TLDR
US Treasury Securities can only fail if the US and the Dollar fails.
Returns on marketable securities are currently ass.
Returns on Savings Bonds are mediocre.
