There are two types of bonds that you can buy on the market easily for most investors that are inflation protected.

There are series I savings bonds and there are treasury inflation protected securities or tips.

And there's a little bit of a story about how we got these two types of bonds.

After the high inflation in the 1970s and 1980s, a lot of research went into how the government could better manage inflation in the future.

And there were a lot of insights that came out of that research, but two of them were very important for ordinary investors.

One was that the government didn't have a great idea of what people expected inflation to be.

And the second was providing investment opportunities for ordinary investors who wanted to save their money and protect it from inflation.

Thus, in the 1990s, they took that advice and released two new types of bonds.

First, treasury inflation protected securities were released in 1997 and are just like normal treasuries with different durations, except they are also protected from inflation.

Series I savings bonds were in addition to the traditional savings bond program, which provided not only a fixed rate of return over 30 years, but also protection from inflation.

And so these are the two most common types of inflation protected bonds on the market today.