Petition to bring back paper Savings Bonds

Marc Prosser, founder of www.LearnBonds.com has started an online petition to bring back paper Savings Bonds. His petition has been covered by Lou Carlozo at Reuters and Kathleen Pender at the San Francisco Chronicle.

The following quote from Carlozo’s article sums up the story very nicely.

Prosser is upset that the U.S. Department of the Treasury stopped selling paper bonds as of January 1, and his manifesto, posted on his website, reads in part: “Over 50 million Americans hold paper saving bonds. For many of these people (including myself), a savings bond served as introduction to the idea of saving money and earning interest.”

In other words, eliminating paper savings bonds takes away a great tool for parents and grandparents to teach an otherwise abstract financial concept: compound interest.

“It’s hard to grasp, but what is very easy — and tactile — is having the physical certificate that the interest represents,” says Prosser. “It’s not just a string of digital numbers. This is something practical, and it teaches people how to save money. It’s a great teaching prop: an oversized piece of paper that doesn’t look like anything else.”

I’m quoted in both stories and you can tell my passion for this issue dissipated long ago, but Processor makes a good point about the value of Savings Bonds as a teaching tool. It’s a point I’ve been wrong to discount as much as I have.