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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

#81

Post by Ekaros »

db48x wrote: post #49
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.

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.

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

#82

Post by ttybird2 »

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.

Quite a few of them are just normal people trying to stay ahead of the inflation.

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

#83

Post by chii »

roenxi wrote: post #30
SpaceL10n wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The I-bond guarantees a return rate at inflation or higher. You're saying you expect negative inflation this year?

I'm saying that he's lending money to the people who write & interpret the rules, and those people do not intend to pay their creditors back in real terms. Indeed, they have probably crossed a practical threshold where they cannot pay back the real amount. It doesn't matter what the rules say right now, his wealth is at risk. They can and do change the rules sometimes. They can change what the word "inflation" means.…

The US gov't so far has enough credibility that they won't manipulate the inflation figures or change the law under you to cheat you of your money.

Of course it _could_ happen - nothing prevents it. And if they did, they'd have destroyed the credibility that took over a hundred years to create, and it would remove any future possibility of people lending money to the US gov't. A rational actor would not undertake this action, unless there's some good reason (such as nuclear war).

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

#84

Post by ianai »

Jenk wrote: post #76
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.

There is a strange human phenomenon, particularly visible online. Some folk see a title like that and it triggers a "How can I blame the author?" urge within before they even open the link.

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 government systems as an outsider is a really bad idea.

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

#85

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

notch656a wrote: post #24
beaconstudios wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the US government really that bad? I hear Americans complain about it all the time but from my experience in the UK the government is mostly competent most of the time.

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…

Rough.

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

#87

Post by JusticeJuice »

pmontra wrote: post #72
JusticeJuice wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I work in the financial advice industry, and I honestly personally believe current legislation in most countries have truly failed to protect normal people from bad financial advice, despite that being their entire point. The problem is, giving financial advice en-masse is very expensive and risky for a company. You need to ask a lot of questions about the users situation (assets, debt, income, dependants, etc) to ma…

> And often the advice comes out as rather un-opinionated and general, which for most people means it's hard to actually action and put in place I agree with this. It seems that I have to make all the choices myself to shield the company from any responsibility so why should I pay some fee for the advice? No wonders that people get advice from random videos on YouTube or any equivalent source.

I have found there is really good advice out there, it's just in places most people won't look.

The first one is books. Go to a book shop, and find a book on personal finances, written by a registered financial advisor in your country, for your country. It'll be long, stuffy, boring as fuck, but you'll likely come away well informed. I think if you're reading HN this would suit.

Second one is personal financial advisers. You want to talk to an independant one, who's not tied to a company that's actually selling financial products. They shouldn't be paid a percentage commision (also called trailhead) on your money - I never understood how somebody can be 'acting in your best interests' if they're paid by how you invest. You should pay them by their time, like you would a doctor. Except it'll cost like $200

You also want a personalised financial adviser. Some advisors say like the one you'd find it you went to a bank, or a mortgage shop have a limited scope - they're only allowed to give advice about the bank's products, or mortgages specifically. You want full picture. Sometimes employee assistance programmes if you have that will actually get you a few free sessions with an adviser, use them.

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

#88

Post by jrimbault »

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.

But if there's a keylogger installed, why would the same keylogger not take regular screenshots ?

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

#89

Post by dwighttk »

Ekaros wrote: post #73
OJFord wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that ambiguous, could either read it as the excess amount or the entirety of the purchase that resulted in excess balance. But anyway it just shows more UX issues - if it's the former then why didn't the balance update to show $10k; in either case why does it accept the payment before checking? It should just say no you've hit your limit this year, or you've already subscribed $25 this year you're limit is $9…

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...

Why do they take the money before checking if they should take the money?

If they waited a week they wouldn’t get the 8.5% (I believe)

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

#90

Post by jtc331 »

jrimbault wrote: post #88
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.

But if there's a keylogger installed, why would the same keylogger not take regular screenshots ?

Not if it’s a physical keylogger, which I think was the primary concern.
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