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Personal FinanceExplainerPast Article

A Treasury Bill Is Not a Saving Habit

One is a security with a maturity. The other is a behavior. They get confused when yields are high.

By Ruth Hale, Personal Finance Columnist

New York1 min read

Stone arches in a historic building
Stone arches in a historic buildingPhoto by Fr. Daniel Ciucci on Unsplash

A Treasury bill pays you back on a date. You can look up a yield for that maturity on a day the Treasury publishes the curve. When the bill matures, the experiment is over. You have cash again, and you have to decide once more.

A saving habit is the decision to keep doing that, or to keep leaving money in a deposit account, on ordinary months when nobody is writing about yields. The habit is not improved by a clever entry point. It is improved by still being there after the yield has fallen and the articles have moved on.

If you buy a bill, know the date. If you are building a reserve, know which bills you will roll. Those are clerical facts. They are more useful than a view on where the policy rate will be in a year.

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