<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by Plato90s:
Consider that even with the CC fee, the gov't pays less interest on the savings bonds than the bonds which are transferrable and sold at auction.</font>
Right now, that's not true. The EE bond rate is significantly higher than the 10-year T-bond yield, even without considering CC fees. This is admittedly an unusual situation, due to the fact that savings bond rates lag and market rates have declined so steeply this summer. People tend to pile into savings bonds under precisely these conditions. The CC fee only pays for itself if the buyer holds the savings bond for several years. I plan to hold until a significantly better rate appears elsewhere, which might be several years or might not.