If you’ve been kicking yourself for missing out on the good U.S. Savings Bond deal that expired April 30, don’t feel so bad. For some short-term investors, the new batch of bonds first offered May 1 can be even better.

In fact, you could buy the new bonds, which earn 4.66 percent, redeem them after one year, pay the early redemption penalty, and still earn more than you would in a comparably safe bank account.

Late in April, I urged fixed-income investors to move fast to get the 4.08 percent interest rate paid by inflation-indexed “I bonds” sold from Nov. 1 through April 30.

For the long run, that looked like a good investment, and it still does even though the new batch of bonds being sold from May 1 through Oct. 31 will pay that higher 4.66 percent rate.

Those pre-May 1 bonds were especially attractive because they were likely to pay more over the long haul even though they paid less at the start. Here’s why:

Yields on I bonds come in two parts. The first is a fixed portion that stays the same for the 30-year life of the bond. Then there’s a variable portion that is adjusted every six months based on the inflation rate. Since the adjustment merely keeps up with inflation, it is the fixed rate that determines how much you make on top of inflation: the higher the fixed rate the better.

The I bonds sold from last Nov. 1 through April carried a 1.6 percent fixed rate and a 2.46 percent variable rate. With a rounding adjustment built in to the formula, that produced the combined rate of 4.08 percent.

On May 1, the government announced that bonds sold during the next six months would carry a fixed rate of 1.1 percent and variable rate of 3.54 percent, giving a total of 4.66 percent.

The variable rate went up because the inflation rate had climbed during the past six months, largely because of higher oil prices. Had the fixed rate been left at 1.6 percent, the post- May 1 bonds would be paying 5.14 percent. That’s very high at a time when bank savings and money market funds are paying only 1 percent to 2 percent. The government concluded it didn’t need to pay that much to attract investors, so it reduced the fixed rate on the new bonds to 1.1 percent. All bonds sold before May 1 still carry the fixed rates they had at the time they were issued.

The higher variable rate does make the newer bonds more attractive for the next six months. But that extra payment is sure to diminish over time because of the way the variable rates are adjusted.

The adjustment takes effect every six months after the date you purchased a bond, and the rate shifts to the level set in the most recent May 1 or Nov. 1.

If you’d bought a bond on April 1, its variable rate would adjust on Oct. 1, going to the 3.54 percent set on May 1. Since the fixed rate would remain 1.6 percent, the combined rate would be 5.14 percent.

But if you bought on May 1 or later, the adjustment six months later would use the new variable rate to be set Nov. 1, 2003, while the fixed rate will continue to be 1.1 percent.

The variable rates on the two sets of bonds will probably never be exactly the same at the same time, since they’ll always use inflation adjustments set six months apart. But every six months, the newer bonds will adjust to the rate used by the older bonds during the previous six months. So, over the long run, the inflation adjustments of the two sets of bonds will be virtually the same.

That’s why investors focus on the fixed rates. The pre-May 1 bonds will pay 0.5 percent more, each year, for 30 years, because of their higher fixed rate.

For the next six months, however, investors can enjoy the annualized rate of 4.66 percent on the newer bonds. That’s very high these days, especially for a super-safe investment guaranteed by the U.S. government.

Under rules adopted a few months ago, you cannot redeem a savings bond until you’ve owned it for 12 months, and if you redeem within the first five years, you give up the last three months’ interest earnings.

If you bought a bond now you’d be gambling on the rate to be paid over the second six months. But even if the variable rate fell to zero on Nov. 1, these bonds would still pay the 1.1 percent fixed rate for the second six months.

For the first 12 months of ownership, you’d earn about 2.88 percent. Redeem and give up the final three months as penalty and you’d still have earned about 2.5 percent. Compare that to the 1.6 percent being paid by the typical one-year certificate of deposit at a bank.

And, remember, this is the worst case. Chances are inflation won’t be zero. If it stays at recent levels, your post-May 1 I bond could well pay 4.5 to 5 percent for the entire year.

Sure, it would have been nice to lock in that 1.6 percent fixed rate paid on the pre-May 1 bonds. But the new deal offers a pretty good rate short term.

And, since the early redemption penalty is so small, if interest rates rise and new I bonds pay larger fixed rates in the future, you could cash in the old ones and buy the new ones.

Keep in mind that savings bonds are no good if you need interest income to live on, since you don’t get the interest until you redeem the bond or it matures.

Most big banks sell savings bonds, and they can be purchased directly from the government at www.savingsbonds.gov.