Savings bonds after graduation

lia_b
Tue, 12 Jun 2012 13:07:15 +0000

My D will hopefully be graduating from college next Sping. After scraping by with our savings and taking some stafford and a small Parent Plus loan, I think we see the light at the end of the tunnel. We have some Seriess EE savings bonds, purchased after 1990 that we have accumulated since she was born. We as parents are the owners on most of them and she is the beneficiary. Up until now, we have not used these bonds to pay her tuition because we would not qualify for the deduction based on income.

I know there are many rules and fine print to use these bonds. I was on the website and my head is spinning. Frankly, I wish we would have done something else but who knew where we would be in 20 years incomewise . Anyhow, wondering what we should do with these. Here are the options I have narrowed them down to:


Use them to pay off the last semester of tuition. We would not get the deduction but maybe we can reject the last semester stafford loan thereby lowering her debt.
Use them to help her pay for graduate school, if she chooses to go. Again, we would not get a deduction either due to income or because she might not be on our return at that point.
keep them and use them for D2’s tuition two years from now.


I am leaning towards option 1 to help her lower her student debt. She does not know if she will go to graduate school straight out of college. She prefers to get a job or paid internship to get some experience and then consider it. Graduate school will be on her as we will not have funds to pay for that.

Would love to hear your thoughts or if you have done something similar.
Thank you