Because of our current high rates of inflation, Inflation-protected Treasury Bonds (I-Bonds) are set to earn 7.12% interest for the next sixth months, followed by 9.62% interest the six months after that. In addition to mutual funds with Christian values, which tend to adjust to inflation in the longer-term, but, as with all mutual funds, can have big swings in the shorter term, someone who wanted a guaranteed rate of return might find these US treasury bonds attractive.  I view their security as comparable to FDIC insurance. If you have confidence your money in your checking account is not going to disappear, the money in the I-bonds is not going to disappear unless the US government defaults on its debt, which is probably not going to happen in the short term, at least (and, while the high rate of inflation is terrible, it reduces the real value of our national debt, and so actually is a debt-fighting strategy–devalue the currency to devalue the debt–albeit an immoral one that repays lenders with currency worth less than what they lent out).

You can purchase up to $10,000 in I-bonds a year, per person (corporations can buy $10,000 each as well) and get up to $5,000 back on your tax return in I-bonds.  Whenever you sell them, you lose the last three months of interest if you have held them for under five years–after five years you don’t lose any interest.  So if inflation suddenly comes under control and their rate of return declines correspondingly (I’m not super hopeful), it would be wise to hold them for at least 15 months so you don’t lose out on the 12 months of high interest. You also can’t sell them before holding them for a year, so only tie up money you won’t need for at least a year.

I believe that churches, as charitable organizations, can also buy up to $10,000 a year, and a church school, as a separate entity, could do so as well.  There may be ways for individuals to buy $10,000 worth and donate them or get refunded for them by a church that wanted to get a lot of these instead of having inflation eat up their savings account, but I have not extensively looked into this possibility (feel free to post anything useful in the comment section of this post in this regard).

You do not pay federal taxes on I bonds, but you do pay state and local taxes, I believe. (I am not a tax advisor.)

To lock in the 7.12% and 9.68% rates, you need to buy them before the end of April.  So you might want to look into doing this soon.  The interest rate is very attractive.

Get more information or buy I-bonds online here.  I am thankful for Doctor of Credit for bringing this opportunity to my attention.

By the way, while I believe Biden is doing a terrible job, high inflation was just about inevitable after the insane increase in the money supply and crazily low rates of interest that we have had for years. If Trump had won, we would still have had high inflation right now, in all likelihood, although perhaps not quite as high, if Trump and Congress had not spent so much money this last year (by Trump not helping two Republicans lose in Georgia, flipping the Senate to the Democrats, and giving the Democrats a unified government so they could spend even more recklessly). Trump was “lucky” to lose and not be the one who gets the blame for the foolish money policy the USA has been pursuing for years.

–TDR