How Series H and Series HH Savings Bond interest rates work
Friday, January 1st, 2010
Categorized as: Savings Bond interest rates • Series HH or H US Savings Bonds
Series HH Savings Bonds have 10-year maturity periods. This means that the Treasury has the right to change the interest rate on your HH bonds every 10 years, beginning from the month in which they were issued.
Series H bonds earned interest for 30 years. They were replaced by HH bonds in January 1980, thus all have stopped earning interest.
Series HH bonds earn interest for 20 years. Those issued in this month in 1990 or earlier have stopped earning interest. Some of the rest of these are paying 4.00%, but when they reach their 10th anniversary, the Treasury is lowering their rate to 1.50%. To see what your HH bonds are paying this month, use my Savings Bond Calculator.
If you own Series HH bonds, you’ll profit from a weekend reading Savings Bond Advisor, which includes a long section showing you how to compare the benefits of keeping 1.5% HH bonds with redeeming them, paying the income tax, and reinvesting elsewhere.
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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
My mother has H series bonds and wanted to know why they paid so little this year compared to all other years. Do you have an explanation? Thanks, Joyce
Joyce – as explained in the article on this page, when HH bonds reach their 10th anniversary, the Treasury – which has the right to change the interest rate at that point – is dropping the interest rate they pay from 4% to 1.5%. That’s a lot less and explains why your mother’s income is down.
1.5% HH bonds are a bad deal for most investors. My book has all the details.