The U.S. government’s Series I savings bonds, which provide protection against inflation, now pay a healthy 9.62% interest rate if purchased by October 28. That has sent so many investors scrambling to snap up the bonds that the Treasury Department website where they must be purchased has reportedly experience intermittent outages and the department said it cannot guarantee that all orders will be completed in time.
“During just the final week of October, the Treasury issued $1.95 billion in I Bonds, more than the total for fiscal year 2021,” The Wall Street Journal reports. “In just one year, some 3.7 million new accounts were created on the site, more than the 2.4 million for the prior 10 years combined.”
More than $22 billion worth of I Bonds have been bought over the first nine months of this year.
The interest rate on the bonds is reset every six months and is reportedly expected to drop to about 6.47% as of November.
