Since it is in a tax deferred account (IRA), I am not sure about the tax implications. I am not expecting to have much in the way of income in retirement outside of the IRA/401k (lousy company pension and Social Security will be history by then).
When I bought them they were yielding 3% over inflation. I still think this is a solid investment but not my only investment. I view it as my way of achieving an inflation indexed annuity (something us private workers don’t get to have). The other 60% of my portfolio will cycle around with other investments.
Since it is in a tax-deferred account, my comments about tax don’t hold. Of course, in an IRA, you pay a tax at the end, but that’s true of everything in it.
So, you can expect a small real return (2 to 3 percent) over the government’s inflation index. While I believe the government inflation index somewhat understates true inflation, it’s still not a bad deal. Think of it as a way to roughly hold or slightly increase the value of savings. There’s very few reliable “under the mattress” value holders in this world.