Only govt bonds i've ever bought started within the last 6 months with I bonds which follow inflation. Seems like about the safest place to put money and still have a growth to me but it's capped at $15k/year contribution ($10k max annual contribution + $5k in tax return via paper Ibond to get to $15k).
I (almost) never owned bonds or bond funds until I retired. Now I reluctantly hold some to keep stability and balance.....and to provide some tax free income. At one time I bought some tax free Muni bonds that yielded 14%. <----that was a 20 year MN Muni (non callable) bond with a great rating.....had "coupons "to clip and present to the bank each monty. I can remember a waiting list to buy Nuveen Municipal bond funds yielding 14%....and they would sell out in a day. Most of those bonds had a call feature.....and they did not last for long.
I also had money market funds that provided a yield of nearly 20% back in the day (80's'). You never know what comes next in this goofy world. Never say never.
Yep....I'm gettin old. Grin.
I tell my kids.....that there was no such thing as a 401K or an IRA or very few ways to invest for retirement until I was in my mid 30's. I had to push my wife's employer to get a TSA program started (a hospital) as they were one of the few places that qualified for tax free investment plans. The big companies had "pensions" but those were not aviallable to many folks back in time....and then your needed to sell your soul to a union job.....ARGH! Not for me. Almost nobody had a decent self-directed retirement plan until the 80's. And those that invested some money paid some high commissions to buy stocks or mutual funds. <----those stock brokers, insurance brokers, and mutual fund salesmen really rang the bell for many years. Then along came folks like Vanguard, Fidelity, T. Rowe Price, etc with low priced, well managed funds as well as brokerages like Schwab and more. Bingo.
In the 80's, 90's and 2000's....I mostly bought no-load index funds and health care and a few well managed mutual funds with a hot manager. I was an early buyer of BRIC funds as I experienced America offshoring almost all our manufacturing. All of those really compounded nicely especially in the 90's. Still....my best-ever investment was my own company.....which took a few years to develop....but really came back in spades.
Some of my old High School friends never really got the message until a decade or two later. They simply didn't yet know or trust the "new" way to invest. Many of you younger guys would not know of such stuff I suppose (?). Anyway....allot has changed to benefit the consumer.....however, sadly, IMO our government has gone to chit.
