Savings Bond Alert #010
Friday, February 4th, 2005
Categorized as: Savings Bond Alerts
Coming very soon from TreasuryDirect – make your paper Savings Bonds electronic
Although conversion of paper Savings Bonds to electronic Savings Bonds hasn’t been activated yet, TreasuryDirect’s help files now explain how conversion will work.
The Treasury currently has no plans to discontinue paper Savings Bonds. However, electronic Savings Bonds are more efficient for both you and the Treasury.
The advantage of converting your bonds will be that you’ll be able to follow the status of your Savings Bonds – including current values and interest rates – online. You’ll also be able to redeem your bonds and have the proceeds deposited in your bank account.
The first step will be to sort your paper Savings Bonds into groups based on how they’re registered. Bonds that have different co-owners or beneficiaries should go into separate groups.
Next, you’ll logon to your Treasury Direct account and go to a page called Manage My Conversions.
On that page you’ll click on Create my registration list and enter the registration information for each of the groups you’ve created.
After you’ve created your list of registrations, you’ll enter each of your bonds. You’ll select the registration on the bond from the list you’ve created and enter the series, denomination, and serial number. You will also be able to enter comments, such as a note about a name change or misspellling.
When you’ve finished entering your bonds, you’ll click a button labelled Create a Manifest. This will print a list of all the bonds you’ve entered. You’ll need to print this, sign it, and mail it with the bonds to the address shown on the manifest. You can put up to 50 bonds on one manifest, and you can have as many manifests as you need.
The bonds will be listed in your TreasuryDirect account, where you’ll be able to see their current value and interest rate. You’ll also be able to check on the status of your conversions to see if processing is proceeding normally or if a problem has occurred.
If you don’t yet have a TreasuryDirect account, you can find out how to open one on our TreasuryDirect page.
TreasuryDirect explained in Savings Bond Alert
If you have a copy of my book, Chapter 3 has complete details about TreasuryDirect accounts:
- advantages and limitations
- how to open an account
- how to see the value and current interest rate of the savings bonds you own
- importance of protecting your TreasuryDirect password
And that’s just one of 17 chapters that can help you avoid hidden penalties and taxes and make you feel confident that you understand how your savings bond investment works.
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Virtually every question about Savings Bonds has been asked and answered on this site multiple times. Use the search feature (see the box in the gray area near the top of this page) or the detailed menu on the lower part of the home page to find the information you're looking for. If you have a copy of Savings Bond Advisor, you can ask me a question here.
Tom Adams
If I buy 60K in I bonds, 30K will have to be paper I bonds, can these be converted later to electronic savings bonds?
Brittany – Yes, you can convert the paper I bonds to electronic, even if you already hold 30K of electronic I bonds for that calendar year.
Although the Treasury may decide someday this is a loophole it needs to close, right now there are no limitations or holding periods required to convert paper bonds to electronic in this situation.
Tom, does the answer to the previous question from 2006 still hold? I have $20K+ in paper bonds I’d like to convert. Thanks.
Ray – If the bonds are more than a year old, then there’s no limit to how many you can convert. If they are less than a year old, it seems to depend on whims of the person handling the transaction that day.
Tom Adams