I don't belong on this thread, but...
Out of curiosity did a comparison of one of my ibonds bought in 2001, to government inflation rate.
Inflation.. $10,000 to $14,400
Bond.......$10,000 to $26,400
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Apropos of nothing, but a wider view of long term investment for the later years.
Yes... the base ibond rate was better, but the bonds were bought when the prime rates were in the 7% range at that time. The Ibond base rate was 4.2%)
See the historical rate chart here.
https://www.gobankingrates.com/banking/interest-rates/see-interest-rates-last-100-years/
What appealed to us during those early years was the idea that at the very least, we would
track inflation, and we could look at this "investment" as a fixed amount, a base for checking on our safety plan. Not a place for large amounts of money, but for several years, the IBond limits were $30K/year per person.
I think that if we were doing this today, we'd put our $20000 limit into Ibonds, each year... as a hedge. Current IBond composite rate is 2.83%.
I guess this makes me an ultra conservative investor.
You might want to know what the average market investor has received over the longer term. An interesting article.
https://www.creditdonkey.com/average-stock-market-return.html
What is the average investor's return on mutual funds?
The average investor greatly underperforms the stock market. Over the last 30 years, the average investor saw a return of 3.66%, whereas the S&P 500 had an average return of 6.73%