Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government

beanlog.vercel.app

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 512 posts

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

#141

Post by isaacgreyed »

OJFord wrote: post #112
Ekaros wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is probably backed by some old mainframe system and done in batches. Earlier the post told it took couple days for 25$ to show up. So it is not real time system, but likely processed weekly, monthly or like. And all of the messes are bunched up and processed for single out come for period of time. User was just stupid not to wait a week before next attempt...

'Cannot make further subscription while one is pending, try again later' then. But I don't see why you can't just record '25' even if it won't settle for days/weeks, and not allow >$9975 in the meantime. (If the $25 doesn't go through then fine, you just end up with $25 capacity still.) I bet it allows you to make a single >$10k payment only to reject it (on an 8-10week time frame) if it behaves like this.

I wouldn't be surprised if the process is intertwined with a paper one as well. That adds significant complication, but it still shouldn't take it.

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

#142

Post by MarcoZavala »

cmeacham98 wrote: post #94
ianai wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s definitely a thing too often. The “middlebrow rejection” or something like that. But in this case the OP got a message saying they had exceeded the limit and would get a refund. Then they repeated the transaction at the limit for a total of 20k. From reading comments here it sounds like the author both misinterpreted things and also compulsively over deposited to test the governments software. Testing governme…

Maybe I was primed by the author because I was reading their article, but I understood it the same way they did - the entire $10k was rejected because it put them over the limit. I probably would have tried the same $9975 transaction they did.

No post body was provided.

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

#143

Post by ntkachov »

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.

Which is ridiculously annoying. I have to edit the HTML every single time to remove "readonly" on that field and paste in my randomly generated password.

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

#144

Post by stripline »

erwincoumans wrote: post #125

Just curious about the "golden window for buying I-bonds" he mentions: what is the benefit of buying ibonds on April 30, 2022 at 7.12% gain versus buying on May 1, 2022 at 9.6% gain?

The reason is that we don't know what the next rate will be. So if you bought in April you are guaranteed the 7.12% and then 9.6% return, versus buying in May you will get 9.6% for 6 months and then an unknown rate after that. It could be more, it could be less - most people are expecting it to be lower.

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

#145

Post by projektfu »

bombcar wrote: post #40
sokoloff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t see any reason to think that most of that delay is in the banking system and have every reason to think the overwhelming majority of the delay is in the US government’s system.

Exactly - I suspect there are internal checks and procedures to prevent scams involving overpayment and immediate refund. Or just as simple as “everything has to settle before we send a check” so you can’t use the US Treasury as part of a check cashing scam.

Yes, I would think that the ACH to the government can be easily reversed if the account were fraudulent but returning the money is not so easily reversed as a scammer would withdraw it and disappear.

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

#146

Post by flik »

JadeNB wrote: post #130
belltaco wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I read this as 173.12 of remaining savings "to invest" (and not entire savings)

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

#147

Post by compiler-guy »

dubcanada wrote: post #58

It honestly sounds like you have zero idea how any of this works, saw some ad about 8% and without reading anything else decided to go all in. And then you decided you wanted to try and break the software while playing around $20k to the US treasury. And now you’re shocked you have to wait 2 months for a refund that’s technically your fault.

Don’t know why you are addressing the author directly.

It’s unlikely that the author reads hacker news, and even if they do, they have said anything in this thread for you to respond to.

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

#148

Post by tluyben2 »

hanoz wrote: post #106
tluyben2 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? Both emails says the purchase of bonds failed and a refund will be processed; you cannot expect that to give you any interest right?

The email is saying, rather clumsily, that the excess $25 of the second purchase will be refunded, and this interpretation is confirmed by fact that the third payment was also deemed to exceed the limit, which it would not have done if the second amount was being rejected in its entirety.

Weird he would say that as he gets an overview of the bonds he did purchase as he did with the 25$. If he got those it would be somewhat weird.

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

#149

Post by db48x »

Ekaros wrote: post #81
db48x wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Correct. He’ll get the refund the day after a clerk reviews the transactions and clicks the refund button. The “Please allow N–M weeks…” verbiage you find in many types of contracts is just the other party giving themselves time to conduct that manual review. It should never be taken as an estimate of how long the other party thinks it will actually take.

More likely process for refund will start when system or someone reviews the refund and approves it. That might also take some time to be processed. I can imagine that their systems generally don't need to be exactly fast and might have very old integrations.

It’s possible, of course. Still, he’ll have it the day after the ACH file hits a real bank somewhere.

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

#150

Post by erwincoumans »

gte525u wrote: post #138
erwincoumans wrote: post #125

Just curious about the "golden window for buying I-bonds" he mentions: what is the benefit of buying ibonds on April 30, 2022 at 7.12% gain versus buying on May 1, 2022 at 9.6% gain?

It's not really golden. It' just i-bond inflation rates are high at the moment. The bond rates are set per 6 month window - but you get it relative to the purchase date. So if you buy before the last possible day before the rate change date you would get 7.12% (annualized) for 6 months then 9.6% (annualized) for 6 months. If you buy after the rate change, you would get 9.6% (annualized) followed by some yet to be det…

So the undetermined inflation rate for November 2022 has to go down to less than 7.12% (annualized) for that (the April case) to be a real "golden" opportunity? How likely is that?
Post reply on HN