You should decide on the purpose of the money and the timeframe.

If the use is within 12 months, Series I Bonds are inappropriate as the money is not accessible.

If the money is for use in 30 years, you really should consider investing in total market index funds.

Define the purpose.

Define the timeframe.

Give the money a purpose.

Here’s a general timeline for I-bonds to help you:

If you buy I-bonds, you cannot withdraw the money for 1 year.

After 1 year you can withdraw your money, but you forfeit 3 months of earned interest.

After 5 years, you can withdraw the full amount without having to pay the 3 month interest penalty.

General info: the rate does change every 6 months to adjust for inflation. And each individual can only buy $10k in i-bonds per calendar year. There are some tricks to buying more beyond the $10k limit through tax returns, or through children, or an LLC (if you have those options) but hopefully someone more knowledgeable on that can comment more.

YMMV but I've got extra $$ in a HYSA making 3.5% and I plan on moving $10k to I-bonds the first week in January as I'm maxxed of for 2022. The rates may drop again in May, but I'm betting they will still be higher than HYSA yields.

I-bonds with a high fixed rate were available years ago. Those would be good to have now and in the future. Today's I-bonds have a very low fixed rate. If and when inflation goes back to normal you'll have a fairly low-yielding bond with a very small premium over inflation. Any guaranteed return over inflation is desirable, but I think you need to put some of your capital at risk to earn better returns if you want to fund a retirement. That means stock markets, other parts of the bond market, etc. I think for people who have not or don't want to put the time in to learn all this stuff, the best way to save for retirement is in a tax-advantanged account like an IRA, RothIRA, 401k, etc., using a retirement target-date index fund. Those funds take appropriate risk for your age and reduce risk as you get closer to retirement. Start there.

You may find these links helpful:

• US Treasury Savings Bonds
• "How to handle $"

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> are we better off sticking with a consistent savings+interest

Nothing about your savings account is consistent, just last year you would have struggled to find anything above 0.5%. Your future savings account rate is just as temporary and unknown.

> I was planning on leaving them for the full 30 years, but it seems like people who understand this stuff far better than I do choose to take them out at 5 years?

Generally speaking, inflation has not been very high in the US. The last period of high inflation was the 1970s. The last decade of historically low interest rates has been driven by the federal reserve struggling to get inflation to reach 2%, and failing.

The general expectation is that there will not be long term high inflation in the US, basically nobody expects there to be. In that kind of environment, holding I bonds for the long term would be a poor choice, and so nobody is really planning on doing so.

Luckily, you can choose to redeem whenever you want (at least, after 1 year), so at any time between now and 30 years you can adjust your strategy.