The Colonel called me from work the other day. She was going over her Air Force Leave and Earning Statement (LES). This is a monthly statement that military members get which officially advises them of what their pay is, where their money is going and how much vacation time they have on the books. There is a remarks section on the LES that is used to advise and remind the troops about new programs and the stopping or modifying of old programs.

The reason for the call was to see if I knew anything about the major reduction in the amount of US Saving Bonds that a person could buy. For years, so I thought, a person was allowed to buy $30,000 in series EE or I Savings Bonds. As of 1 January 2008, the amount has been dropped to $5000. A short mental math check tells me I can now buy $25,000 less in bonds per year. My wife and I have been buying US Savings Bonds since we were Lieutenants, so I went to the US Treasury web site www.treasurydircet.gov to find out why.

The published answer is that approximately 98% of the people who buy series EE and I bonds purchase less than $5000 worth of bonds per year. So the powers to be felt it was time to officially restrict the other 2% who do buy more than $5000 in bonds per year before these big spenders get out of control and buy way too many EE & I bonds. To paraphrase the Treasury, the EE and I bonds are for the little people who just can’t play in the big leagues of investment.

OK, I will buy that, but why do they need to slam the door in the face of the 2% who can and do buy more that $5000 in bonds? I even sent an e-mail message asking someone from the Treasury to provide a name and point of contact so I could speak to a real person on this issue. To date I have gotten e-mail traffic with the same published information that I already read off the web site.

I started looking around on the web to see if I am the only one who noticed this major change in the way the little guy can safely and securely invest their money. The first thing you will discover is that no one in the investment business likes US Savings Bonds. The interest on Bonds is believed to be too low to keep up with inflation and therefore the investment business world has plenty of “better” places for you to put your money. These perceived better places to invest all come with higher risks of loss, not only in interest, but also in the potential loss of your original investment.

I know that if you do not take some risk you will never increase your personal wealth the way you could if you successfully played the stock market all your adult life. However, nobody successfully plays the stock market all his or her business life. Some investors loose everything. The average military officer and career NCO cannot afford to take any major negative hits in their investment portfolio.

I remember my First Sergeant politely yelling at me when I was a new Second Lieutenant, telling me that I needed to get on the payroll deduction plan to have money automatically taken out of my paycheck for a monthly bond purchase. He really was a pain in the butt; however, I did start the program and kept buying the bonds the entire time I was on active duty. You know, I still have all those bonds. If I had not purchased those bonds all those years, I would not have that money in my hands today.

The incorrect understanding I had, that I could only buy $30,000 worth of bonds was way off the mark. I could have bought $30,000 paper bonds of each series, EE and I along with $30,000 each in electronic bonds, for a total of $120,000 in Savings Bonds each year. My wife and daughter could do the same thing for a total of $360,000 dollars of very safe and secure investments for our family. From my limited research, I believe Wall Street wanted this stopped. If there was a pending or perceived pending downward turn in the investment market, smart people might pull their money out of the stock market and protect it in safe Savings Bonds. Nobody in the investment business world gets to charge you a broker’s fee in the selling transaction of Savings Bonds. It does not take an Oliver Stone conspiracy movie to tell me something is rotten in the finance world.