Seems silly to me not to use I-bonds even if the cap is relatively low, sure wish I could (not American).
The rest I invest in equities, which assuming the US has a functioning society in 5, 10, or 20+ years, will be worth far more.
First, this is ridiculous. It was pretty easy to set up. Yeah, the virtual keyboard is weird and there's some waiting with the verification, but it's trivial effort.
"I also want my cash to be accessible within a few days"
Now we're comparing apples to oranges. If you need the cash in a few days (kind of odd/rare to begin with), then you want a saving account not an investment. That said, withdrawing your I bond capital does not take months or years (withdraw anytime with only a loss in interest if less than a year).
"The rest I invest in equities, which assuming the US has a functioning society in 5, 10, or 20+ years, will be worth far more."
Depends on the equities and your definition of a functioning society. It's more likely to be flat, at least in real terms, over the next decade.
I am under the assumption that the US’s leaders have every incentive to keep broad market equity values going up, even if it means the USD loses purchasing power. There are a ton of leaders with equity ownership that want to see it go up, as well as political support from constituents with IRA/401k/etc, as well as the innumerable underfunded defined benefit pension plans across the country that rely on broad market equity values to keep rising to meet their projected expenses.
For that reason, I consider an SP500 ETF like VOO or even VTI to be relatively safe and track inflation over the long term.
Only a raging bull market like the one we've gotten out of makes a 10% government backed rate of return sound bad.
My philosophy is I keep a certain amount of physical cash (in case electronic payments go down), I keep digital cash (in case my income gets disrupted), and the rest is invested. I already have the digital cash in an FDIC insured savings account earning 2.4%, and I do not need to worry about splitting it up into per year amounts or when I can and cannot withdraw it and how much.
It is more of a simplicity thing I guess for me, and the abnormal inflation calculations which lead to the last 18 months of exceptional i bond returns probably will not last.
So you're looking at getting $600 - $800 to tie up $10,000 for a year, and you have to go through hoops and a cumbersome website to do it.
It's a better deal than other fixed income investments right now, but with an after-tax return that's guaranteed to be worse than inflation, it's hard to get excited about it.