Series I and Series EE explained · rates for bonds issued May 1, 2026 to October 31, 2026 · U.S. Treasury
A savings bond is a loan you make to the U.S. government. You buy it directly from Treasury rather than from a broker, it earns interest for up to 30 years, and when you want your money you redeem it back to Treasury for the principal plus everything it has earned.
What separates it from every other government bond is that it does not trade. A 10-year Treasury note has a price that moves every day and can be sold to someone else at a profit or a loss. A savings bond has no market price, no buyer other than Treasury, and no way to lose principal. It is registered to you by name, and that is the trade: complete safety and zero liquidity for the first year.
| Series I | Series EE | |
|---|---|---|
| Current rate | 4.26% | 2.40% |
| How the rate works | Fixed component plus an inflation component reset every 6 months | Fixed for the life of the bond |
| Special guarantee | Value never falls, even in deflation | Doubles if held 20 years |
| Best suited to | Protecting purchasing power | A known sum at a known future date |
| Annual limit | $10,000 | $10,000 |
The headline rate on a Series EE bond is 2.40%, which looks unremarkable. The guarantee attached to it is not: hold the bond exactly 20 years and Treasury guarantees it will be worth double what you paid, adding a one-time adjustment if the stated rate did not get it there.
Doubling over 20 years is an effective return of about 3.5% a year, which is the number that actually matters — and it is well above the quoted rate. The catch is that it is all-or-nothing on timing: redeem at nineteen years and you get the stated rate only. That makes an EE bond a poor instrument for money you might need and a reasonably strong one for a date you know in advance, such as a child starting college.
Both series are bought from TreasuryDirect, which is Treasury’s own account system rather than a brokerage. There are no fees and no intermediary. The minimum is $25 and you can buy any amount above that to the penny, up to $10,000 per series per calendar year, per Social Security Number.
The limit is per SSN, not per household, so a couple can buy twice that between them, and bonds bought for a child under their own SSN have their own limit. Because the cap is by calendar year, a purchase on December 31 and another on January 1 fall in different years.
Since January 1, 2025, savings bonds are electronic-only. Guidance suggesting you can take up to $5,000 in paper I bonds as part of a tax refund describes a route that no longer exists. Paper bonds issued before then remain perfectly valid.
Neither series can be redeemed in the first 12 months at all — there is no early-withdrawal option, no penalty that buys you out of it. Between one and five years you can redeem but forfeit the last 3 months of interest. After five years there is no penalty.
At 30 years the bond stops earning interest entirely. This is the detail most worth acting on: a bond past final maturity is doing nothing, and a great many older paper bonds are still being held long after they stopped paying. Treasury publishes a Savings Bond Calculator that will tell you a paper bond’s current value and whether it has stopped earning.
Interest on both series is subject to federal income tax but exempt from state and local income tax, which is worth real money in a high-tax state. You are not taxed as the interest accrues — you can defer the whole liability until you redeem the bond or it reaches 30 years, whichever comes first.
Interest may also be fully or partly excluded from federal tax when used for qualifying higher-education expenses in the same year the bond is redeemed, subject to income limits and a requirement that the bond is registered to the parent rather than the student.
Rates and rules as published by TreasuryDirect (U.S. Department of the Treasury) for bonds issued May 1, 2026 to October 31, 2026, recorded here on September 11, 2026. Rates reset every May 1 and November 1. This page is information, not investment or tax advice; see our disclaimer.