I just registered on the site to bid on a Treasury Note, but at the last second hesitated. It seems really straightforward, but is there anything I should be wary of?
Thanks.
I have not purchased through Treasury Direct but I have redeemed paper bonds through them. They take forever (6 months) and pretty much ignore emails. Calling a customer service rep means being on hold for hours. So although I don’t know about the buying process, pray you do not need help or human assistance with your order.
I bought savings bonds from there last year, and then again this year. (The first purchase was intended to take advantage of a spike in bond rates.)
I bought an i bond last year and just redeemed it. The whole transaction was on line & painless. The redeemed funds appeared in my checking account within 48 hours.
It’s not the most user friendly website, but buying a bond was pretty straightforward as I recall.
Yes, thirding these last two posts. It wasn’t a slick, easy website, but I figured it out and I’m no techie. It was easy to fund, and easy to redeem.
Wasn’t that 9% iBond great last year? Would that we could always get that kind of return.
I’ve been buying bonds for my nieces every year since 2009 with Treasury Direct. I agree it’s not the most user friendly site but all the answers you are needing are there.
Only thing I’ve had trouble with was my mom trying to buy bonds for my nieces. You can’t just buy a bond and transfer it. You have to buy a gift bond, then wait a couple days, then gift/transfer it. If you mess up and just buy a bond, that’s it, it’s yours. You HAVE to start with a gift.
Also if you want to buy a gift bond, the recipients need their own accounts. And then you need their account info. But once you have done it once, their info is accessible in your account for further gifts.
This was my exact experience, too, although I haven’t redeemed the full amount. For me, this was a short-term investment with liquid funds, and for that, it worked beautifully.
There is only one concern I have: Treasury Direct never communicates with you directly by either email or regular mail so far as I’m aware. If I go out and get hit by a log truck this afternoon, other than my own records letting my beneficiaries know about the account and how to access it, I don’t know how anyone would ever become aware of this estate asset.
Make sure to leave bread crumbs somewhere.
It’s straightforward. It looks and appears like a usenet site. I’ve seen high school band booster fund raising sites that were more polished and professional. The Treasury could probably hire a couple of college kids and pay them $100k and improve the customer interface by a factor of 100x.
Right? Can you guess how many times I re-checked the URL as I was typing in all that information? ("Okay, it’s treasury.gov, not treasury.guv, looks okay?) It looks as you say very usenet.
Oooh, good point. I was just in the process of documenting all our assets, perfect timing.
Thanks everyone! Think I’m putting in a bid on a T-note later this month then.
Yeah, we have a total of six I-bonds purchased online. The money came directly out of my bank account.
Yeah @teelabrown , those i bonds inflated and POOFED like a souffle in an earthquake. You can do A LOT better now with a T bill or even a decent money market account. Fidelity’s MM fund was paying 4.99% last time I looked.
Like @Aspenglow I used funds that were getting moldy in a low-interest savings account. I have one i bond left and will redeem it as soon as the one year penalty period passes. Probably will buy a T bill through Fidelity just to make it easier to keep track of.
I-Bonds are at 5.27% right now.
Ah, thanks! I didn’t look at the current rate. The second i bond I bought went from over 6% for the first 6 months to less than 3.4% for the next period. I decided to invest in an instrument with a less volatile rate. To me, the difference between 4.99% and 5.27% is small enough to not have to deal with the pain in the neck of checking the rate every 6 months.
Here’s the i bond historic rate chart from the Treasury Direct website.
I bought ours when the rate was over 9%. While it has dropped off quite a lot, it’s still better than most bank CDs, although those have jumped up recently to attract customers.
Even though you already have Treasury Direct account?
They are free to setup, and they sell all manner of paper, from overnight to 30 year and everything in between. If looking for absolutely safe short term parking of large-ish sums of money can’t think of anything better, at least for Americans. If i ever win the lottery (which I don’t regularly play, so it is admittedly highly unlikely) I always thought parking my millions in a Treasury Direct account would make the most sense.
All my other retirement accounts are at Fidelity and you can buy most (not i bonds!) Treasury instruments through them or any other large broker for free. The bonds show up on my Fidelity portfolio so I don’t have to log into a separate site. If I didn’t have a brokerage account already, Treasury Direct might make sense, though as others have commented, if I pop my clogs suddenly, my heirs have to know to look for it. I’ve prepared an “in case I’m incapacitated” letter that sits by the computer with instructions how to access all the financial stuff.
Interesting. I see that Fidelity & Vanguard both charge no fees for buying Treasury bonds, but are they marked up?
Fidelity: “Choose from 100,000 new issue and secondary market bonds and CDs, and over 150,000 total offerings quotations when including our depth of book. Only $1 per bond mark-up/mark-down for secondary bond trading, $0 for US Treasuries online.”
I don’t know about Vanguard.
Looking at Treasury Direct, I was thinking in terms of new issuance notes, but I see a healthy secondary market on Fidelity/Vanguard, and that might be easier since I have an account at each.
To answer your other question, I compared a handful of CUSIPs, and the Vanguard ask yield was slightly worse for each one. So, I’d guess Vanguard has a tiny little markup that Fidelity doesn’t.
I’ve been trying to keep my Fidelity (pensions/SERP) and Vanguard (active/other investments) separate, but I’m a sucker for a deal…I’ll be shopping Fidelity. Thanks for the help.