When it comes time to purchase the Series I Savings Bonds one of the purchasing limits that you will face is who is able to purchase the Series I savings Bonds. In order to purchase the paper bond certificate Series I Savings Bonds and the electronically registered Series I Savings Bonds you must meet the following requirements.
- You must be a U.S. resident, you can also be a U.S. Citizen that is residing abroad
- A civilian employee of the United States, no matter where your residence is located
- Minor under the age of 18, this is different from any other type of investment.
- As of April 2009, companies can also purchase Series I savings Bonds, but they are limited to only being able to purchase the electronically registered savings bonds that are offered through TreasuryDirect.
Another limitation that you are going to face when purchasing the Series I Savings Bonds is the total value of the bonds that you can purchase. The reason that you are going o face this limitation is that the United States Government placed the limitations to help limit the tax advantages that the wealthier people can get from investing in the Series I Savings Bonds. One of the good things about the limitations is that if you are married the limits are high enough that you can take advantage of the investments; the only ones that cannot benefit greatly from these investments are members of the capitalist class.
When it comes to purchasing the Series I Savings Bonds, you are only allowed to invest up to $10,000 in Series I Savings Bonds. Even though you can invest up to $10,000 in Series I Savings Bonds, you will have to split up how that money is invested. Each year you can invest up to $5,000 face value in the paper bond certificates for Series I Savings Bonds. You can also invest up to $5,000 face value in the electronically registered Series I Savings Bonds that are offered from TreasuryDirect.gov. This will give you a total of $10,000 for each year, but there is also a way to get around the purchasing limits.
The biggest problem with the purchasing limits is that it is hard for the capitalist class to invest a large percentage of their income into these types of savings bonds, which is considered one of the safer types of investments. Luckily, there is a few different ways to get around the purchasing limits so that you can invest a good portion of your earnings into these tax advantage savings bonds.
The first thing that you can do to get around the purchasing limits of the Series I Savings Bonds is to have both you and your spouse invest in the savings bonds. When you are married each of you can invest up to $10,000 in the Series I Savings Bonds, just make sure that you only list one of you as the owners on each set of investments. For example, your name can go on the first $10,000 worth of Series I Savings Bonds and your spouse must go on the other $10,000.
Another way to get around the purchasing limits is if you have children. How this works is that the purchasing limits fall well below the gift tax limits so you can purchase the Series I Savings Bonds and gift them to your children. Both you and your spouse can do this for each of your children, you can do it for $10,000 and your spouse can do another $10,000.
The last method that you can use to get around the purchasing limits is to combine the Series I Savings Bonds with the Series EE Savings Bonds. This works because the annual purchase limits are different for the Series EE Bonds, but they provide the same tax benefits.