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business with them. It sounds like a lot of money until you realize that you have to wait 17 years to collect. You can buy them yourself for a nominal price. With some savings bonds however, you pay the face value and collect interest as you go on. This is true of I Series, which are inflation-indexed bonds. Even if you don’t cash in your savings bonds at maturity, they continue to collect interest for a long period (for example for a total of 30 years) after the maturity date has passed. After that, however, they stop collecting interest. Currently there are billions of dollars worth of bonds which have stopped collecting interest and their holders have not cashed in. This is like losing money as inflation erodes their values.

To buy other types of bonds (or bond funds) there are numerous brokerage houses and investment firms who would be happy to set you up with your favorite bonds. The well-known ones include Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Dean Witter, Smith Barney, Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and plenty of others. Also as we discussed, if you are interested in Treasury bonds, the Treasury Department (through the Bureau of the Public Debt) offers the TreasuryDirect system where you can buy T-bills, notes, and bonds directly from the source. …