The Daily Money: Time to sell those bonds?
Good morning! It's Daniel de Visé with your Daily Money.
The good news: Inflation has eased over the past year.
The bad news? So has the variable rate on those I bonds you bought back when inflation hit a 40-year high.
The I bonds you purchased in the summer of 2022, which paid a record 9.62% in annual interest when inflation was soaring, are now paying about a third of that, Medora Lee reports.
But with inflation down and interest rates up, thanks to aggressive Federal Reserve rate hikes over the past year and a half, you’ve got a lot of options to earn more than those I bonds offer, investment advisers say.
“You should sell them,” said Daniel Milan, investment adviser and managing partner at Cornerstone Financial Services in Southfield, Michigan.
How to avoid student loan debt
Last year saw failed attempts to forgive student loans en masse and a herky-jerky return to loan payments after a long hiatus. It was also a year that raised fresh questions about whether a college degree really pays off in the long run.
Despite that, Nirvi Shah reports, Americans are generally undeterred in their pursuit of higher education. The number of prospective college students creating Common App accounts to apply to schools in 2023 surged, including among those who would be the first in their families to go to college, and among students of color. A disproportionate share of the nation’s nearly $2 trillion in student loan debt is carried by women. Black women, in particular, owe an outsize sum.
Does it have to be this way? Is it possible to go to college without taking out student loans or to find a well-paid job without a degree? Paste BN spoke with college students, graduates and dropouts about getting the skills or degrees required to become professionals, without going into significant debt. Unless a student’s family can underwrite their education or secure a coveted scholarship that covers the growing price of a degree, it’s very difficult.
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About The Daily Money
Each weekday, The Daily Money delivers the best consumer news from Paste BN. We break down financial news and provide the TLDR version: how decisions by the Federal Reserve, government and companies impact you.