Converting Paper Savings Bonds to Electronic Form With SmartExchange
Tip It!This is just a quick followup to yesterday’s post about Series I Savings Bonds. As I noted in that post, you are limited to purchasing $5k of these bonds in electronic and paper form each year for an annual total of $10k (per Social Security number).
Assuming that you max out, this means that you’ll be the proud new owner of bonds in two forms. Yuck. The good news is that you can convert your paper bonds into electronic form. The TreasuryDirect website explains how. In short:
- Open a TreasuryDirect account (if you don’t have one)
- Notify them using the “Contact Us” that you want to convert paper bonds
- Wait for an e-mail saying your account has been prepared for conversions
- Login to your TreasuryDirect account and click “My Converted Bonds”
- Click “Manage Direct” and then select “How to Convert My Paper Bonds”
From there, just follow the instructions and you’ll be home free. I’m still not sure why they have separate limits for paper and electronic bonds, but it is what it is. At least you don’t have to hang onto the paper bonds if you don’t want to.
Note that I haven’t completed this process myself (yet), but I will be doing so soon, and will post more details when that happens. In the mean time, if you have any tips, please weigh in.
Published on November 10th, 2009 - 2 Comments
Filed under: Saving & Investing
About the author: Nickel is the founder and editor-in-chief of this site. He's a thirty-something family man who has been writing about personal finance since 2005, and guess what? He's on Twitter!
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2 Responses to “Converting Paper Savings Bonds to Electronic Form With SmartExchange”
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November 10th, 2009 at 7:23 pm
Did you see anywhere is this works for EE Bonds as well?
November 10th, 2009 at 10:30 pm
I did this when I first got my paper I bonds. The conversion itself was really easy (you do have to send in the bills snail mail though). The only annoying part was logging into your account! (how many passwords, codes, usernames do they need!)