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I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

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Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#121

Post by prepend »

jeroenhd wrote: post #111

This'll be a good story to tell at the bar once all the money comes back. I'm still baffled by how someone thought "let's see what happens if I send $20k here when the system says it shouldn't be possible". Strip a few zeroes from there and I guess it's worth the funny anecdote, but these are serious amounts of money that the author just sent into the black hole of bureaucracy for shits and giggles.

It’s funny that I think lots of finance assumes that people with large sums of money will do lots of due diligence. So typically people with $20k sitting in their boring old checking don’t make such stupid mistakes. And the mistakes are pretty easy given the pretty anti-UX that banking tends to use.

I think if regular people used these transactions more we’d have more errors. But then I suppose the UX would get improved because we’d have millions of transactions instead of thousands.

As it is now people spend a lot of time and so bad UX can still be successful. I probably spent 20 minutes on the treasurydirect site and their purchase/transfer page as opposed to seconds on my consumer-designed bank page.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#122

Post by prepend »

pid-1 wrote: post #98

> They're zero-risk bonds with an interest rate that always matches or exceeds inflation The caveat is that you must agree with how your govt. calculates inflation. Also, your personal expenses might not be well represented by official inflation. Finally, like any bond, if you sell them before they mature you might get smaller (or higher) returns. Not saying this is a bad investment though, I just rarely see those ri…

> The caveat is that you must agree with how your govt. calculates inflation.

This is an easy caveat to make as there are many other parts depending on how the US government calculates inflation.

And there aren’t alternate inflation calculations out there, and certainly no consumer financial instruments pegged to them.

For all its flaws, it’s the best we have. I think it’s not discussed because it’s such a sunk risk that it’s not really anything that would change someone’s mind.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#123

Post by prepend »

sudden_dystopia wrote: post #96

Are bonds issued by a dysfunctional government that is severely in debt in the middle of a couple of years of consistently tumultuous world events really “risk free” anymore though? These bonds only match inflation as defined by the government via CPI. But there is a strong argument that real world inflation is significantly higher than CPI.

They’re as close to zero risk as you can get in the world.

If the US government defaults on debt, then I bonds will be the least of our concerns. So this is sort of an “all eggs in a single basket” type situation as USG pays a zero risk premium.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#124

Post by antihero »

rockbruno wrote: post #65
vasco wrote: post #32

The venn diagram of internet users that read about super specific financial products, decide to buy them, while not even understanding the need to keep an emergency fund such that a move like this leaves them with under $200 in their account seems to be growing. It seems to be a weird mix of wall street cosplay and financial ineptitude.

I have witnessed this working at FAANG where people usually have the choice to allocate their grants into either risky options or safe, straight cash. The amount of people I see going all-in into the riskiest option and then proceeding to not understand why they lost their "compensation" (?) when the stock drops frightens me.

It's because in tech you are paid so fucking much that any ridiculous screw up you might do only affects you momentarily, you can still afford your bizzaro happy life, if you've fucked your savings money there's always more cash for rent, bills, enjoyment, on the horizon. Life become a fucking toy on some levels. There is no fear.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#126

Post by Ekaros »

butlerm wrote: post #118
notch656a wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's vast and unpredictable. Example: Two weeks ago I re-entered US as a citizen. Several people ahead of me smoothly went through the border control line. I was 'randomly' chosen for inspection by border patrol, an agent fabricated a story that a dog alerted, and I was forcibly strip searched where yet another agent fabricated he saw a 'plastic baggy' coming out of my ass. This 'evidence' was used to cuff and shackl…

If there are government agents out there that do that sort of thing as a matter of course, they should be prosecuted without mercy and imprisoned for decades as the criminals they are, if not lined up and shot at dawn.

Nah, prosecutors are in on the game. They don't prosecute their friends and colleagues unless there is big enough media presence or they have something to gain from the process. Usually it is well tied corrupt, nepotistic system with even the judges involved.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#127

Post by butlerm »

skeptikal wrote: post #52
roenxi wrote: post #22

> They're zero-risk bonds... To qualify this, there is zero risk that the technical letter of the agreement won't be honoured. Lending money to the US government is very high risk right now. Simple person metrics like debt to GDP indicate they're currently fighting a bigger war than WWII, and the trend-line says they are losing. If you lend the US government enough money to buy a sandwich there is a real risk that at…

The idea that the US will de jure default on its obligations is risible. De facto its happened at least once before when Nixon closed the gold window overnight.

In 1933 Congress unilaterally devalued the dollar by nearly seventy percent, rewrote the gold clauses in private contracts, largely forbid the private possession of gold, and managed to get away with it. The Supreme Court conveniently decided to ignore the Constitution on that occasion.

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#128

Post by elicash »

lvl102 wrote: post #103

That’s why you buy through a bank. Edit: I am wrong. You can only buy it two ways which is ridiculous in my view. More to the point of the website that belongs in a museum, why can’t they update this consumer facing portal? What happened to all the people from “digitization” govt organizations? Such as 18F and usds. Oh. You mean all they do is replace the front end? Got it.

You can’t buy i bonds through a bank.

You’ll be happy to know this site is in fact being redesigned per an article I read recently

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#129

Post by adar »

newsclues wrote: post #107
jefftk wrote: post #62

> They require you to enter your password by clicking on a virtual keyboard. This pseudo-security measure actually only slows down humans, not bots, because you can still edit the value of the text field using Javascript. I don't think this is generally worth it as a security measure, but the goal is not to protect against automation. Instead, custom on-screen keyboards are attempts to thwart keyloggers.

If the goal is to prevent automation, they failed because it can be done with JavaScript.

Are you sure you correctly read the post you're replying to?

Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

#130

Post by JadeNB »

belltaco wrote: post #108
xkbarkar wrote: post #69

I thought this was funny. Weird comments in the thread about how he/she should have known better. Author is not making a complaint to demand internet outrage. There is no inflammatory justice warrior content here. Sheesh! Author admits they screwed up, decided to share the screwup, and who hasnt been trough that exact dunder blunder? Fun short read 8/10.

I only clicked on the article because the title said "all my money". I thought there was some glitch where the entire bank account got emptied. But it's just the author putting in the numbers that got withdrawn, and the author having 20K as all his money(if true, not confirmed in the article) is a coincidence. Clickbait title for sure if nothing else.

> the author having 20K as all his money(if true, not confirmed in the article)

The author explicitly indicates that it is all of their savings:

> I sat there with my $173.12 of remaining savings and $25 in I-bonds, feeling like I had accomplished something truly remarkable.

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