I’ve been liking T-bills (and T-notes to a small extent) in recent years. The reason I like them is because I can easily ladder to whatever duration I like. For example, if I know I will need a bunch of money in a year, I can simply put it into a 52-week T-bill and not think about it again. In 52 weeks, on a Thursday, the money appears in my account and can be used as necessary. In fact, last Thursday, the 52-week T-bill that I purchased on 8/4/23 at a rate of 5.351%, matured and was deposited into my account. Since I didn’t need the money right now, and since I have other T-bills maturing this week, I bought another 52-week T-bill, but that one is only yielding 4.458%. Overall, for most of the cash invested in T-bills, I have been outpacing the money market funds (or HYSAs) by a little bit. But it does take a minute or two of “work” twice each week to place the orders for the new T-bills each Tuesday and Thursday. In my case, in order not to have to think about ladder details, I simply buy ALL the new T-bills, that way I have stuff maturing twice every week for at least a year out. And when I see CDs with good yields, I sometimes snap them up, but the ones with good yields disappear very quickly so I can’t much of them. And lately, there are no CDs with good yields.
This can’t happen with T-bills. Ever. You buy a T-bill at a discount, and then at maturity, it pays you face value. Every time. For example, today I bought CUSIP 912797MK0, the 26-week T-bill, for 97.5759, and on 2/13/25, it will mature at 100 exactly.