Thanks, Mark, for that excellent summary. I looked at TIPS when I was going through the retireearlyhomepage site, but forgot about them when the author said they weren't the smoking deal they once were. This was probably 5 years ago now (when I was looking at TIPS, not when he originally posted the article). The "smoking deal" aspect can change from one year to the next, apparently. So one would have to reevaluate regularly.

Unless one could get better returns on them, what advantage do you think they would have? 1poorlady has a Discover bank account that returns 3.7% right now. And that's just a vanilla savings account. Not advertising Discover, just stating the current rate. Which is way above my credit union. I like my credit union, but am considering moving the account because they pay so very little (<1%). I have all my auto-pays from there, but that's a different subject.