Am I crazy or will the author get a refund of the “excess purchase”, e.g. $25 refunded to their bank account (until they dumped in an extra $9975 anyway)
I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
361–370 of 512 posts
Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
#362Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> there aren’t alternate inflation calculations But there are. Institutions such as the IMF also have their own economic measurements.
I don’t think the IMF publishes US inflation numbers using their own methods.
Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
#363The 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.
People are desperate about the future. Gone are the times when having a good job, paying a reasonable mortgage for a reasonably paid house, saving a reasonable amount for retirement, while keeping a reasonable amount for emergencies (rare, before lay-offs become the knee jerk reaction of MBAs to fatten their bonuses). Due to the increasing financialization of the economy, more and more people feel like they need to b…
>Gone are the times
Those times never existed for the vast majority of people. Minorities, single women, most men...... None of them had this rose colored past.
Statistically, more people now have more income in the US than ever before. Each income level is higher, some more than others (and this is a static snapshot, most people move around income quintiles throughout a career), options for goods are higher, items are safer (cars especially), and on and on.
The "life used to be so easy to make a good pay and have a great life" views are not backed by the evidence.
Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
#364Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s not a big deal, it’s just the author did a bonehead move and it writing it up because it’s funny. I think it’s appropriate to say they made a stupid mistake and move on. The author is likely a little frustrated so I can forgive their shade throwing at treasury.
Felt like a wallstreetbets post. Inflation is only at "8%" (still remember back in 2021 calling this a conspiracy), so 8 / 12 = ~0.7% = 700 USD loss / month on 10k deposit.
Of course the only place you can get 8% return on savings is at treasury and he already maxed that out.
He’s lucky to get 1% return on a high yield savings so he lost 1/12 = .08%/month so if it takes two months for a refund he lost $16.66 in interest from where he has it parked. My bank’s high yield interest only returns .05% so if I had acted stupidly and made the same mistake I would have missed out on 83 cents for the two months.
So he’s lucky it’s not a very expensive mistake.
Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
#365Why doesn't the USDS get involved in this?
The Treasury is supposed to be a huge backbone of the world's economy and it doesn't look good imo to have software designed this badly for it.
Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
#366I've been in the US for 4 years and it seems like the government is just like a computer that you cannot talk to or get issues fixed somehow. It's like, if something goes wrong you're fucked. If USPS loses your documents or even your car's title, or your immigration approval notice, you're fucked, you might need to wait 2 months, or 6, or 8, and nobody cares, nobody will help you. There's no one that can help you. At…
It's no wonder that people vote for less government influence in the US. They just never had a good experience with it so they want to get rid of it as a band-aid solution.
And ironically, that is the entire problem in a nutshell.
People keep voting for less government (meaning workers) but not less government (meaning scope of responsibility), so the remaining workers must handle larger workloads. That's never worked out well in any industry, and it's bizarre people think it would work any better in government.
Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
#367I've been in the US for 4 years and it seems like the government is just like a computer that you cannot talk to or get issues fixed somehow. It's like, if something goes wrong you're fucked. If USPS loses your documents or even your car's title, or your immigration approval notice, you're fucked, you might need to wait 2 months, or 6, or 8, and nobody cares, nobody will help you. There's no one that can help you. At…
This is kind of my experience with government (or any actor with too much power for their own good) anywhere.
Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
#368Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if there's a keylogger installed, why would the same keylogger not take regular screenshots ?
Screenshots wouldn't be of much help. The frequency would need to be almost like a low-fps video recording in order to capture the buttons' pressed state. At that is assuming the state is visually distinct in the first place.
Some keyloggers do printscreens on mouse presses, bypassing this issue.
Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
#369I'm glad to see I'm not the only internet user who wonders "will this fail?" to the point that they try the problematic action before their original, intended action. It's this kind of thinking that got me into software QA a decade ago.
Re: I accidentally loaned all my money to the US government
#370Earlier quoted context omitted.
People are desperate about the future. Gone are the times when having a good job, paying a reasonable mortgage for a reasonably paid house, saving a reasonable amount for retirement, while keeping a reasonable amount for emergencies (rare, before lay-offs become the knee jerk reaction of MBAs to fatten their bonuses). Due to the increasing financialization of the economy, more and more people feel like they need to b…
Isn’t buying a US backed bond the opposite of “speculation”?. The rate of return for a US bond has been called the “risk free rate of return” since I was in grad school over two decades ago.
In general, yes. However, unlike other bonds I-bonds have no secondary market, so there's no way to liquidate them in an emergency if you need them before their maturity date (1 year).
With I-bonds you don't need to speculate on whether the bond will default, but it does force you to speculate on what your financial situation will be over the next year.