Savings bond value table: every January from 1996 to today

January bonds from 1996 to 2026, valued on October 1, 2026

Each row is a bond issued in January of the year shown. The EE column is a $100 paper EE bond, the kind sold at half its face value from 1980 to 2012; after 2012 only electronic EE bonds exist, so those rows show an electronic bond bought for the same $50. The I column is a $100 paper I bond through 2024 and an electronic one bought for $100 from 2025, since paper I bonds ended with the 2024 tax refund program. Rows marked with an asterisk use the electronic form.

Reading one row: face value, price, interest

Three numbers matter on a savings bond, and the table shows only the last one. The face value is the amount printed on a paper bond: $100 in every row here. The price is what the buyer paid: $50 for a paper EE bond, the full $100 for an I bond. The value is the price plus all interest added so far, the amount a bank or the Treasury hands over. Interest, the figure that ends up on your tax return, is the value minus the price.

That is why a $100 EE bond worth $50.92 is not a loss: the owner paid $50.00 and has earned $0.92. A face value is not a promise of what the bond is worth today. For EE bonds bought from May 1995 to May 2003 it is the amount reached at 17 years; for those from June 2003 onward it is twice the price, reached at 20 years. The EE value page walks through those four periods one by one.

The young rows and the three-month rule

Every bond from 2022 through 2026 is under five years old on October 1, 2026. Cash one now and the Treasury pays it as if it were three months younger: the last 3 months of interest are dropped. The table already applies that cut, so the value shown is what you would actually receive. Across those rows the cut is at most $0.36 on an EE bond and $1.28 on an I bond: small in dollars, because three months of interest on a young bond is little money. On the fifth anniversary the penalty simply disappears and the full value shows up on the next first of the month.

The January 2026 row cannot be cashed at all yet, because bonds issued since February 2003 must be held 12 months. If you are weighing whether the penalty is worth paying on an I bond, the cash or keep calculator sets it against what a new bond would earn.

Rows that no longer move

Savings bonds stop earning 30 years after their issue month. In this table that is the January 1996 EE row: its value is final and will be the same next year. Any EE bond dated October 1996 or earlier is in the same position, as are all the older Series E bonds and savings notes. Bonds that have stopped earning lists which issue dates are affected and how the tax works when they stop, and the Series E table covers bonds from 1941 to 1980.

Paper or electronic: where a cent can differ

A paper bond is a stack of units, $25.00 for Series I and $12.50 of price for Series EE, each grown and rounded on its own schedule. An electronic bond is valued differently: the Treasury takes the value of a $100 bond and scales it to the exact amount paid, rounding once at the end. For round amounts the two methods land on the same cent. A $100 I bond of January 2010 is worth $162.84 on paper and $162.84 in electronic form.

Odd amounts are another matter. Electronic bonds can be bought to the penny, and TreasuryDirect gives $36.73 as an example. An electronic EE bond of January 2015 at that price is worth 0.3673 times the $101.84 of a $100 bond, or 37.4058 dollars before rounding, paid as $37.41. That single rounding is why an electronic holding can sit a cent away from the sum you would get by adding up paper denominations.

When your bond is not from January

Interest is added on the first day of each month and the rate changes every six months counted from the issue month, so a bond issued in July of a year is not worth the January figure. For I bonds the gap can be large, because a July bond and a January bond of the same year may carry different fixed rates. For EE bonds bought since May 2005 the rate itself depends on the six-month window of purchase. The tables above give the order of magnitude; the calculator at the top of the page takes the exact issue month, the face value or amount paid, and any month up to the end of the last announced rate period.

For the rate each I bond earns this month, I bond rates has the table by issue window. To turn a value into cash, cashing a savings bond explains the bank and mail routes, and the tax page covers the federal return.