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Today at work, a 40-ish year old guy came in with his 90+ year old Uncle.

He explained that Uncle Charlie just sold his home of 40 years and was moved to an assisted living facility. In cleaning out the home, someone came across a tattered envelope that held a stack of US Savings Bonds and they were wondering what the value of the Bonds were and if they could cash them in.

He handed me the stack of 128 bonds and I saw that they all had a face value of either $500 or $1,000 and were dated between 1978 and 1983.

I proceeded to use our savings bond calculator to determine today's value and was able to inform Good Old Uncle Charlie that his 128 savings bonds that he had forgotten completely about were today worth...$147,070.00.

Can you imagine?? FORGETTING that you have $147,070.00 sitting in a tattered envelope on a shelf in your closet???

Do you have any savings bonds sitting around your house??? click here to see what they are worth.


http://www.treasurydirect.gov/BC/SBCPrice

We have a few, some old, some not so old.
Total value <$500.
Nothing like Uncle Charlie's stash.
Happy Birthday and Merry Christmas, oldster!

WOW!!

I had bonds bought for me in 1960 when I was born.. $200 worth... I sold them in 1977 for $500 and it was used as a down payment on my first car.

WHOA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I wish I had that money sitting around.

I have a $50 bond at my mom's house.... need to get the numbers off to see how much it is today.

How nice for him

Thats awesome, I'd probably fall over dead if I found $147,000.

SMLCHNG wrote: WOW!!

I had bonds bought for me in 1960 when I was born.. $200 worth... I sold them in 1977 for $500 and it was used as a down payment on my first car.

Good investment, Penny. Sometimes your first car is more important than a lot of thing...we all remember our first car. What kind of car was it?

Ukulady wrote: What kind of car was it?

1977 VW Rabbit.. only in orange.

SMLCHNG wrote:

Ukulady wrote: What kind of car was it?

1977 VW Rabbit.. only in orange.

Rabbits were so cute. I wasn't so lucky. I bought my first car off my Dad. Mine was a 1971 Licoln Mercury LTD...a HUGE floater car...if you laid the front seats all the way down they met up with the back seat and made a king size bed....

Ukulady wrote:

SMLCHNG wrote:

Ukulady wrote: What kind of car was it?

1977 VW Rabbit.. only in orange.

Rabbits were so cute. I wasn't so lucky. I bought my first car off my Dad. Mine was a 1971 Licoln Mercury LTD...a HUGE floater car...if you laid the front seats all the way down they met up with the back seat and made a king size bed....

I got my first car from my folks too. It was a 1978 Chevy Monte Carlo. White with a Tan Landau Roof.

I wish I had kept it instead of trading it in on an 1988 Nissan Sentra.

My youngest son took out my '86 Rabbit convertable for a spin yesterday.
I bought it new in '86.
300,000 trouble free miles on it.
Nothing like a chickmobile for getting the chicks!

Remember, savings bond interest is taxed!
My 18 year old as well as myself were happy when cashing the bonds for college.
He was a little upset this week filing his first tax return!

Too bad he didn't invest in a bank CD. It still would have been taxable, but he would have easily had double that amount if not triple. US bonds are horrible investments.

Skibo wrote: US bonds are horrible investments.

So is college these days!

My grandparents and godparents used to give me bonds every year for birthday and Christmas presents. When I decided that I was going to ask my girlfriend to marry me, I cashed them in and bought her ring. I still joke with her that she is wearing 20 years Nanny and Grampy's Christmas presents. With some leftover which we used for the honeymoon. Horrible investment? No, they are merely one portion of an entire porfolio. They should never be your only investment. Just as stocks should never be the only part of your investments.

I made the down-payment on my first house with savings bonds my grandmother had given me when I was born!

I was the savings bond coordinator for a bank for several years, ending in 1992. We were the only bank in the state allowed to issue over the counter bonds in the early 90's. If the bond was used for payment for higher education income taxes on interest could be excluded under the Education Savings Bond program. At one time the interest rate for savings bonds was higher than that for CD's