Cashing long held saving bonds

[Carol1862]

Many years ago (25-30 maybe even longer) my parents gave my 2 siblings and me savings bonds. My sister cashed hers in. My brother is not at this time. I was looking at them recently and realized they are all written as follows:

Carol Doe or John Doe
Carol Doe or Sue Doe

My husband is concerned that if something were to happen to me then my siblings would have to cash the bonds for him and they would have to pay taxes on the interest. My husband would pay them back for whatever the extra taxes were. But suppose they don’t want to cash it for him. Or they decide to keep the money for themselves (we’re close enough that I would be really shocked if they did this, however, we all hear horror stories about money and families).

We decided to cash them all in. Interest rates on them are 3.5-5.25. Is this advisable? We don’t need the extra money at this time.
We’re in 22% bracket. How do I figure what to send in for estimated taxes?

Thank you.

 

[mystang52]

I THINK there's a mechanism to modify the ownership of a Bond. It's worth checking into, before cashing in a Bond that you don't want to. But based on your OP, Bonds stop earning interest after 30 years so if they are approaching that age just cash them in once they reach final maturity.

 

[tflannery]

We cashed in I-bonds in late 2023 and early 2024. Part of the reason TIPS were a better deal and we wanted to simplify our investments. I think you can pay the taxes from the Treasury Direct website when you redeem the bond. We just paid the taxes thru estimated quarterly payments. When you redeem the bond, you should be able to see how much interest was earned.

Our kids also had some I bonds that were gifted to them and we cashed them in. Again, just to simplify things. I did not trust that they would be able to navigate that website right now. My 3 kids are in their early 20's.

 

[Texas Proud]

Yea.... I would look at the bonds and see when they were issued.... because if they are over 30 years you are getting zero interest now...

 

[Carol1862]

I checked. They were issued 20 years ago and still get interest

 

[Terry99_25]

At 20 years the EE Bonds reach their face value (at a minimum) even if the interest paid up to that point would not have totaled up to the face value. So the 20 year point is an excellent time to evaluate each individual bond for its interest rate for the next 10 years at which point the interest accumulation stops.

 

[RetMD21]

It looks like you can change co-owners but apparently need a signature from both. Changing information about EE or I savings bonds (reissuing) — TreasuryDirect