One of the most popular investment products in the United States is the U.S. savings bond. It is very popular because it is very easy to purchase and to redeem.
I recently purchased several U.S saving bond through payroll deductions as part of my automatic savings plan. I wanted to find out how much those U.S. savings bonds were worth so I went online to find a U.S. savings bond calculator.
I have documented the steps I have taken to find the value of my U.S. savings bonds using the U.S. savings bond calculator at the TreasuryDirect web site. The steps are outlined below:
- Search for the term "U.S. savings bond calculator" in Google. Expect lots of hits when you do this. When I did, there were more or less 143,000 results for the search term I used.
- Click on the first result that you see. Mine read as "Individual - Savings Bond Calculator." This will direct you to a web page in the TreasuryDirect web site, which outlines instructions on how to use the Savings Bond Calculator.
- Once you have read the instructions, click on the Get started button, which can be found at the bottom of the web page. Clicking this button will direct you to the web page where the Savings Bond Calculator is located.
- Fill out the form. You will notice that there is already a date entry in the "Value as of" box. If you are looking for the current value of your U.S. savings bond, do not change this date. However, if you are looking at the future value of your U.S. savings bond, say 5 months from now, you can go ahead and change the date entered there.
Also notice the drop-down menu in the "Series" box. Choose whether the U.S. savings bond in your possession is an EE Bond, I Bond, E Bond, or a Savings. Note that there is also a drop-down menu in the "Denomination" box. It lists the different denominations of your U.S. savings bond, which starts from $10 and ends at $10,000. - Fill the remaining two boxes with the Bond Serial Number and the Issue Date of the U.S. savings bond you have.
- Click on Calculate. Wait a few seconds for the system to calculate the value of your U.S. savings bond. The calculator will give you the value of your bonds from 1996 to the current date.
- If you do not fully understand the fields displayed in the results of your calculation, click on "Help" button at the top of the calculator. Here you can find brief descriptions of the data that you are seeing.
- If you want to, you can save your inventory. Use this feature if you do not want to re-enter your bonds every time you use the Savings Bond Calculator. You can find instructions on how to do this enable this feature on the Web site.
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