Show HN: Earn 9.62% on US Treasury I Bonds on Yotta

TreasuryDirect doesn't have an API, so there's no way to implement this without storing your users' TreasuryDirect passwords. How do you protect those passwords?

With reference to https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/363.17, what recourse would I have if I use your service and my TreasuryDirect account is compromised as a result?

Your other products include FDIC insurance via Evolve Bank & Trust. I can't imagine the FDIC would cover losses related to this product—i.e. funds are only FDIC-insured up until they're used to purchase an I-Bond. The FDIC recently sent a cease-and-desist to FTX in relation to a similar scheme (in FTX's case, funds are only FDIC-insured at Evolve up until they are used for cryptocurrency purchases); see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32524527. In light of that action, what have you done to clarify the limits of the FDIC insurance to your customers and potential customers?

You wouldn’t necessarily need to store passwords in plaintext. You could keep a password encrypted and then when a user logs in their password is sent along on a request that does the automation and then discarded at the end. Of course that would mean you could only do a read operation on the website once, or else keep the session with the site open internally.

Why are we guessing when the person that could clear it all up is lurking in these very threads.

That person went really quiet once people starting truly poking at the security and legality of this idea. I'm sketched out by their communication patterns, and won't touch this with a 10 foot pole.

> If anyone wants to control their Treasury Direct directly without Yotta, they can request it, and we will transfer over their account to no longer be managed by Yotta.

This implies the bonds are stored on their account, not the end users

Can you buy Ibonds on behalf of others? My understanding was they cap the amount per SSN to $10k/yr. How could one account have more than that?

My guess is that they have 2 passwords. One password for access to Yotta which is provided by the user and stored securely/irrecoverably (i.e. hashed, salted, and peppered - yum), and another password for actually accessing TreasuryDirect is generated and stored by Yotta.

Why would I want to use your company for buying an I-Bond myself? Treasury Direct kinda sucks, but it's really not that bad. And once you're through the initial setup repeat purchases (like each subsequent year) is a lot easier.

Why would I want to insert a middleman into a long term investment? If you all go sideways -- which is incredibly likely within the next 10 years -- then it'll be far more hassle than the up-front TD signup irritation.

1) Easier UI and management of your I Bonds. Treasury Direct has lots of issues and you'll likely end up having to call in and wait on hold for 2 hours with customer support at some point. Maybe not if you're on top of things, but most people aren't.

2) Having your money all in one place. It's annoying to have money different places, so if you already have a Yotta account with us, it's one tap to do this. If you are starting from scratch, it's not as much of a no-brainer, but I still think it's much better than TD.

If we go sideways, we would just give everyone their TD account information directly, and you would take over your account.

Are there legal protections to ensure that you'll give us the TD account directly, like is it like a bank or is it that we just have to trust you?

Yes it would not be legal if we didn't give you access. So there are protections there.

What are those protections, exactly? Be specific - point to documentation.

"Trust us!"

I hope everyone reading this post knows how easy it is for Yotta to open any account at any other brokerage with this information. From there, they could initiate a transfer from your OTHER (non-Yotta) brokerages and drain your account. It really is that easy with the in-kind (or ACAT) process. Even if Yotta isn't nefarious, they could be hacked and a bad actor could use your data to accomplish the same thing.

I recommend locking down all of your investment accounts, Fidelity specifically has a lockdown mode designed for this. You can still trade/add money/pay bills, but no one can drain your account just because they opened up another account with your SSN.

https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/investing/switch-brokers-...

Yeah, this is crazy. Do not have 3rd parties do this on your behalf.

That said, I just tried to sign up for a Treasury Direct account, and while it was 'successful,' I immediately got an email saying they could not verify some of my information and so my account was on hold pending receipt of a notarized form I have to mail. For my protection. It says the average approval time for this form is up to 13 weeks, so I can probably forget about I Bonds this year.

Yotta likely doesn't solve the issue you bumped into though

OP is in this thread and has confirmed that they cannot handle that case.

Yeah, to be clear I would rather not invest at all than have Yotta do this for me. That is a bad pattern and clearly the company cares more about visibility than customers or they wouldn't even offer it.

I too had a problem (maybe same email with multiple accounts). You have to get the form stamped with a "medallion stamp", not just a notary. So check your bank if they have someone that can do this

I'd encourage anyone interested to go to treasurydirect.gov, sign up for an account, and try to buy an I Series Saving Bond. It takes 15 minutes and couldn't be easier. If you want to be able to paste your password, just F12 and change the readonly flag on the login page.

Also, callback services have been around for decades. If you don't want to wait on hold, use one. No one needs a middleman to buy bonds.

Note: If you want to play it savvy, wait to buy until the November rates are announced later this month. If they're higher, you can just lock in 6mos at that rate instead.

My wife and I both bought I Bonds directly. It was not exactly a painful or confusing process at all. Granted, the UI/UX of the US government bonds website was not fantastic, but it was certainly usable.

Glad you didn't have to deal with any of Treasury Direct's nonsense. If you make a mistake logging in, you have to wait on hold with customer support for around 2 hours.

Other than their goofy login page (which you can fix with a 1-liner in greasemonkey), I actually love the TreasuryDirect website. This is maybe a controversial opinion but it's one of my favorite US government websites.

The UX is awesome and the layout is simple: no popups, interstitials or other BS. Even better, the page load times and responsiveness are significantly better than any other financial website a visit. I can check log in AND check my TreasuryDirect balance in about the same time it takes me to log into my Schwab brokerage account or load a thread on Reddit.

Their FAQs are also written in an easily understandable way, which is good because I Bonds and the other bonds they sell have some complicated nuances. They even update the FAQs regularly so that all their I Bond example calculations use the current semiannual interest rate.

One thing that would be cool about this Yotta offering is if they automate some of the I Bond annoyances (I needed a medallion stamp to open my account although not everyone is that unlucky), give a consolidated view of purchases and holdings across across multiple SSNs and EINs, and centralize that management.

Thanks for the feedback and thoughts. I guess those aspects of TD are nice, but if you ever make a mistake, they don't handle it gracefully.

Just curious, how do you handle accounts that require medallion verification to open. Do you stamp it yourself? That could be a nice benefit for people that don't have a brick and mortar bank nearby

We can't support those unfortunately right now. Maybe in the future.

That's like, the primary thing that aggravates people about TD! You speak elsewhere about people having to wait in a line for phone support for hours and the reason people need to do this is because their accounts fail to verify automatically.

Do you support cleanly setting up POD beneficiaries? Do I need to give you my spouses' SSN for that too? Or do they also need a Yotta account?

I 100% agree; the login is goofy, but overall I prefer the site because it uses a relatively simple UI (and isn't concerned with the latest design fad) to show me relatively simple data. I use Ally for retail banking and now the page loads but it takes several (very noticeable) seconds to load my account balances and while it's doing that, I have to wonder how computers which can do literally billions of operations per second with multi-gigabyte network links can take so long to load a single number. I'll take the 1998 look over that any day.

maybe a better app would be a chrome extension that fixed all the bugs on Treasury Direct. You could do all the hairy things in the extension without data leaving the users browser.

I'm curious about how the legalities of this work.

If you create a TreasuryDirect account using my SSN, do you then require a durable power of attorney to manage it on my behalf, as laid out in 31 CFR § 363.33? Or are you simply logging in using "my" credentials and performing actions as if you were me? If the latter, are you at all worried about the Treasury Department cracking down on this?

We do the latter. Performing actions as if we were you. I am not worried given that.

Well, if the guy selling it isn't worried, we're in the clear, right everyone? /s

I liked the description of the product when I first read it. I really did. But I'm losing confidence the more OP keeps pushing in the comments.

This might be a decent product, but I'm wary of someone who is pushing hard to let them create investment accounts on other platforms on our behalf. It just feels like the kind of thing that when it blows up in the future, hindsight will say, "Why did you let someone do that in the first place?"

You have sold me on I Bonds as a financial product, but you'll never touch my money. Hire a lawyer.

> I am not worried given that.

YOLO is definitely an interesting approach for a financial company. Didn't people shit all over Plaid for taking this approach? Training people to give their financial credentials to 3rd parties is not the best.

Hey, cut him some slack, he did say he was in the business of "making saving exciting." The risk of handing over your financial credentials is exciting because you never really know what may happen!

I also find the use of ibonds funny for a service that ostensibly exists to encourage people to invest. Pointing people at a vehicle that currently (and for the foreseeable future) offers zero real growth by definition isn't going to make the world into successful investors.

If I were him, I'd be pretty stoked about the Plaid comparison.

Keep it up! You're acting for the good of the user, YOLO it.

You don't need power of attorney to act on someone's behalf with their explicit permission and instruction. It may be against TreasuryDirect's terms of service (I have no idea, I haven't read them), but there's nothing specifically illegal about this.

Interestingly, TreasuryDirect's terms of service are codified in the Code of Federal Regulations:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/part-363/subpart-B

From a brief reading, having a third party access your TreasuryDirect account does seem problematic:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/363.22

https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/31/363.17

The virtual keyboard on the Treasury Direct login page is terrible, especially for those of us who use a password manager. I use the following bookmarklet that "types" each letter via the exposed JavaScript function on the page itself.

  javascript:prompt('treasurydirect.gov password please').split('').forEach(PasswordVK)

easy-peasy

Does any other website in the world use a virtual keyboard like that? I don't really understand why they do it. To prevent keystroke tracking I guess? It's bizarre.

I always just paste my password into the field. That's always worked for me. Safari/macOS.

Didn't know pasting worked.

Yes I believe it's to counter key loggers.

HSBC used to use a virtual keyboard but I wouldn't be surprised if they dropped it. (I am no longer a customer.)

hah! I edit the frontend html every time so I can use my password manager

Meh imo it's easier to have the bookmarklet remove read only on the form and then just use the password manager like normal

Similarly, I have a Greasemonkey userscript to remove the readonly attribute for the password input form so my password manager works:

  for (const e of document.getElementsByClassName("pwordinput")) { 
    e.removeAttribute('readonly'); 
  }

It's pretty interesting to see the same Hacker News that is up in arms daily over privacy concerns get excited about handing over to a startup their SSN and other personal information that can be used to open any financial account on their behalf and continue acting on their behalf despite it being against the terms of service and/or law. This same startup will also hold access to the $10K+ account hostage until requested, unless they suddenly go out of business as nearly every startup does, especially ones that mysteriously don't even monetize the services they render.

There's a $10k annual limit per individual, LLC, or trust. (Plus a bit more as paper I bonds in your income tax refund.)

Can you partner with Stripe Atlas to help me spin up a trust or business entity and buy another $10k? I'll pay you a 5% commission.

Not a bad idea...

You can create as many simple revocable trusts as you'd like using a Nolo offering and a visit to your bank for notarization.

I've heard TD will sometimes complain about a trust with your SSN as its TIN, but I've had no problems. After all, it is still a separate entity and that is the technical requirement.

Managing your own records and dealing with TD's horrible login process are the main hoops to creating multiple accounts. I appreciate the GreaseMonkey snippets for fixing their password input, that are listed elsewhere in this thread. But what would be really fantastic is if OP published their code for programmatically interacting with Treasury Direct.

I Bonds are 30 year bonds. Since the I Bond yield of 9.xx% is only guaranteed for the first 6 months, what's the consensus thinking here on a long term hold of them?

Some info I found says:

   I bonds cannot be cashed for one year after purchase. If a bond is cashed in
   year two through five after purchase, the prior three months of interest are
   forfeited.  There is no interest penalty for cashing in the bonds after five
   years.

Sounds like you'd have to hold them for at least 1.25 years then to get a year's worth of interest.

IMO, it's not worth over thinking. The rates are very good, but you are limited to a relatively small amount of money. My wife and I both bought an I bond at the recent rates. If we're lucky, we'll make about $1,000 each on them. You can do a lot with $1,000, but it's not like we're talking about life altering amount of money here (in the context of people who can afford to put $10K in an I bond in the first place). We basically used money that would ordinarily be earning less interest in some kind of emergency-funds checking account.

It probably would not be worthwhile in the grand scheme of things to take $10,000 from some kind of actual investment account and move it over to these I bonds for a brief duration.

That's true. I'll probably grab one once the official site works again, but I was weighing that, plus the inconvenience of having to manage funds in yet another location and keep the tax implications in mind (you only have to pay federal taxes on interest here).

Add this to your uBlock filter:

  treasurydirect.gov##+js(remove-attr, readonly, input.pwordinput)

This is a fantastic initiative. Yotta is gamifying savings, because why not? And it's FDIC-insured so I don't have to worry about trusting money to a start-up.

I think the UI-improvement over dealing with the treasury website is substantial. Good work on finding the opportunity and setting it up transparently via your already-existing buckets feature.

A note of appreciation, that's all.

Thank you - appreciate it!

Been using Yotta since the early access-ish launch. I was always prowling for something like it once the American Savings Promotion Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Savings_Promotion_Act) was passed. Does its job, does it easily, and my effective APY has been MORE than competitive. For certain.

I have always bought I-bonds direct so doesn't apply to me, but making that easier for the average person -- and more importantly, increasing awareness of their existence -- is a good thing. It's about accessibility for people still getting their financial footing.

Just getting the average person to save more is a good thing, and accessibility is key to that.

Thank you!

Your I Bonds are not FDIC-insured. FDIC does not insure bonds. If your account gets compromised, there's nothing they can do for you.

https://www.fdic.gov/resources/consumers/consumer-news/2022-...

They just updated the Treasury website in order to meet demand. You took away your value add for Point #1 by making this post, and Point #3 isn't really that hard anymore.

Thank you for your transparency in advertising.

They only updated the front end main landing pages, not the core experience of opening accounts logging in, filling out forms, making mistakes. That is all the same as it's always been. Painful.

If I made a mistake in entering my info into Yotta, how are you going to correct it without me going though the TD medallion process?

Although the TreasuryDirect UX is pretty bad, it's not impossible to navigate. My biggest beef with TD is that there appears to be no way to convert the bonds purchased electronically to paper bonds. You have to keep them on the web site, which seems risky. You are hoping that 1. their database does not get corrupt or something and they lose tens of thousands of your dollars, 2. your account doesn't get compromised, 3. your account doesn't get banned or deleted.

With a bank, you (typically) have a brick-and-mortar building you can walk into to resolve edge case problems, and also FDIC insurance. For brokerages, you have SIPC for fraud and sloppy accounting, and usually have decent telephone support. TD has a phone number--that's it. Ever try calling it? It's a long hold time, and who knows if they can even handle these edge cases. Who would you sue if you lost your account or became a victim of fraud?

Bond markets are biggest ones in current financial system. You can see almost every big player in bond markets. There is something that I have to mention, If bonds have a high yield, it means that the price is low. For a bond-inventor looking at the price to appreciate, you wouldn't want high yield on bonds. When you see the bonds yields are green, it is actually totally red for a bond investor. Another thing to mention about Bonds is that Bonds are supposed to be the most durable and stable financial instruments ever. Mostly pension funds like regulated intermediaries are buying bonds. So, if something happens to bonds market, pension funds will be affected directly and then probably whole financial system will collapse.

If you've already bought, say $5k, through treasury direct, can you buy your remaining $5k allotment through Yotta?

Unfortunately not. We can only support accounts that haven't previously created Treasury Direct accounts.

Buying I-bonds from treasury direct is a piece of cake even though their website is stuck in the stone age. I think anyone who would use a 3rd party to do this is out of their mind.

Anyone know if you can buy these as a non US citizen?

No you can't

You can buy at if you are a Resident-Alien (for tax purposes) in US with a valid SSN. I bought it and I am on a non-immigrant work visa.

Feedback: I found a bug. I signed up with email/password, and then accidentally closed the tab (after creating my account). When I tried to sign in, it's asking for a code sent "to my phone" — I never provided my phone number, and therefore can't sign in.

Thanks - reported this for us to look into. Will circle back

Can foreigners buy these I Bonds?

Is it only for American citizens? Or can anyone get sweet yield and invest?

You need a US SSN or TIN

Can't get past pin code confirmation on my cell phone anyway..

I don't think TD does pin confirmations via sms

Can a foreigner, non-living in USA, get a TIN?

From treasurydirect.gov:

- The person must have a Social Security Number.

- The person must also meet any one of these three conditions:

    - United States citizen, whether the person lives in the U.S. or abroad, or

    - United States resident, or

    - Civilian employee of the United States, no matter where that person lives

Is this service only for individuals or can you set up an account for my corporation too ? The process of setting up a treasury account for my business at Treasury Direct is stalled for some reason.

Edit: I noticed a related comment:

Rebelgecko: how do you handle accounts that require medallion verification

adammoelis: We can't support those unfortunately right now.

That was the problem on my end. I went through the hassle of getting a medallion verification for my business 2 months ago, mailed in the paperwork, and never heard back from the treasury department.

Also, individuals can only buy $10,000 of I bonds per year, plus your tax return up to another $10,000.

Correct - good point. Edited the post to add this piece of info which is important.

> plus your tax return up to another $10,000.

$5K, not 10K.

https://www.treasurydirect.gov/savings-bonds/i-bonds/

>Is there a maximum amount I can buy?

> In a calendar year, one Social Security Number or one Employer Identification Number may buy:

> * up to $10,000 in electronic I bonds, and

> * up to $5,000 in paper I bonds (with your tax refund)

> For individual accounts, the limits apply to the Social Security Number of the first-named in the registration.

I was slightly interested in this since I despise using most government websites but after looking at "Yotta" it's a hard pass. A fintech bank with a gambling aspect? Count me out, sounds extremely irresponsible and scummy.

Are US citizens who live abroad able to use Yotta to create a TreasuryDirect account? I ask because the normal process requires one to get a form notarized with an American notary public, which is hard to do abroad.

You can only put $10,000 per person per year into US Treasury I-bonds.

The only exception to this is that you can use any money the government owes you on your tax return (up to $5,000, iirc) to purchase I-bonds in addition to the usual $10k limit.

If inflation is still nasty come February (or whenever I get my W-2) I'm highly contemplating doing this with the EV credit I'll be getting...

Also any businesses or trusts you own each get $10k of their own investment as well.

Does the iBond value decrease if the FED continue to raise rates?

The Fed's goal is to have interest rates above CPI so the iBonds is expected to lose value in the medium term, isn't?

No. They're not market traded. I bonds are steady like a bank account, they just have holding period restrictions.

You forgot the $10,000 annual limit

If your service made it easy(er) to circumvent that then we’re talking

Otherwise, congrats on having well connected publicists, getting in Bloomberg can be tricky

I still can't figure out how Plaid got away with doing the same thing, but every other startup (rightly) gets raked over the coals.

As an aside, can someone here clarify if its possible to open Treasury Direct account for minor citizens with alien parents who are not tax residents.

I already have a TD account, so I can't use Yotta :-/

Can anyone tell me the ID of the bonds inside of TD which would be bought through Yotta?

What do you mean exactly by ID? We do Series I Bonds.

You can't get 9.62% APY.

The final data isn't available, but the upcoming rate is going to be way lower.

The yield changes every 6 months. I-bonds bought on or before October 31st are considered retroactive purchases to the 1st of the month, and keep the 9.62% rate until the 1st of April.

This is disclosed on the linked page (https://www.withyotta.com/i-bonds):

I-Bonds purchased now through the end of October will have a 9.62% Interest Rate guaranteed for 6 months. Future changes in rates are not disclosed by the US Treasury.

Yes. And since the next rate will be more like 6% (EDIT: divided twice in my original post), anybody expecting 9.62% APY (which has "year" in the name) is likely to be disappointed.

Let's say you buy today and hold for one year. You get 4.81% after 6 months and then like 1.5% for the next 6 months (you lose three months of interest when you sell if you aren't holding for 5 years). And then you have to pay federal taxes. Let's say 22%. On your 10,000 you net... $492. Not anything close to the eye popping 9.62% being touted.

Check "Current composite rates" on https://www.treasurydirect.gov/savings-bonds/i-bonds/i-bonds...

The current rate of 9.62% is the lowest it's ever been, and its never changed drastically.

It's just FUD to claim that it'll drop to 3%.

Also, you're locked in, you can't touch the money for a year, and there's a penalty for withdraw before year 5. It's designed as a safe saving instrument, not a stock market replacement.

I, for one, am glad to have invested every year. It's a nice emergency fund.

Divided twice by accident. It'll be more like 6%. We've only got one month of data left in the computation we don't know about. Doesn't change the math that somebody excited about getting 9.62% over the next year is going to be disappointed when they walk away with half of that.

> The current rate of 9.62% is the lowest it's ever been, and its never changed drastically.

Recommend doing the math yourself as a sanity check using the composite rate formula in conjunction with historical fixed and semiannual inflation rate tables. The implication is that either the composite rate formula or the historical composite rate table is in gross error, where the latter is much more likely given a naive understanding of what the instrument's intent is.

Can you explain where you think the math error is on https://www.treasurydirect.gov/savings-bonds/i-bonds/i-bonds... under the “ An example” section?

The suspected error wasn't in the An example section...I knew there was an error somewhere, but weighted this more probable to be correct given the effort put into clearly explaining the method in step-by-step manner.

In my previous remark, turns out that the root of the error was in too quickly and incorrectly concluding (admittedly having never purchased these bonds before and only learning of them this year as we went into a bear market) that both the fixed and inflation rate components were subject to change every six months.

It wasn't until I saw your follow-up today and attempted to revisit details without bias that I noticed this linked chart[1] which made it immediately clear what critical bit of conditional detail I had missed, that is, the fixed rate component is determined at the time of initial bond purchase and persists unchanged for the life of the instrument...whoops!

To be fair, my original remark was in response to your assertion that "the current rate of 9.62% is the lowest it's ever been, and its never changed drastically." Even with my now corrected understanding, this assertion still doesn't stand in my mind given the linked table demonstrates that the prevailing 9.62% composite rate approaches historically high levels independent of original purchase date, and although variable returns ranging from 0% to 10+% depending on issue date is agreeably not drastic to someone as young as me, it's nevertheless pretty subjective, e.g. if you bought between 05/20-10/20, you'd have seen variable APY ranging from 1.06% to 9.62%, which is objectively pretty volatile.

[1] https://www.treasurydirect.gov/files/savings-bonds/i-bond-ra...

So how does Yotta make money? Do you charge to open an account or take a slice when the bond matures?

We don't. There is a completely optional way to pay us what you want when you buy the I Bond, but this is a brand awareness play for us. Our hope is to drive new acquisition and to convert a portion of that acquisition to other products down the road.

> All the time our customers ask us - how do you make money doing this? The answer is simple: Volume

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KodqIPMbyUg

We don't make money really on I Bonds. User acquisition play.

Yotta looks incredibly similar to what Simple once was (before being bought out and shutdown). The key Simple feature being the ability to allocate and lock portions of bank account holdings to specific goals, so you held it but couldn't spend it. Looks very similar to the buckets.

I loved my Simple account, this looks like a great replacement for it.

Is this the same as buying an inflation protected bond ETF? (TIP)

No these are different securities. I Bonds are very unique in how they are structured.

Can I access my TD account after it's created by Yotta?

Yes just reach out and on request, we can give you full access to your Treasury Direct account any time.

What happens if you go out of business and a user doesn't realize until a year or more afterwards that they should have asked you for that info? Can they "reclaim" their Treasury Direct account down the road without you?

Yeah we have very easy way to give you your TD account directly. If this were to happen, we would give access to everyone and ensure they received the information to take over their accounts.

Thanks for the response. Is there any way a customer who slips through the cracks could do that directly with TD? (e.g. "I'm Jim Kirk, here's my ID, a notarized affidavit, a blood sample...")

If it is very easy, explain how they would work if you went out of business. You know, doors locked, no employees. Probably more than a few of us have worked for companies where that happened…

I think this indirectly answered my question. What if Yotta goes out of business or decides to stop supporting this?

We'll just get direct access to our TD account. Doesn't sound like this would happen automatically though? So if you guys suddenly closed shop with no warning, what recourse do we have?

$10k max deposit. Meh.

Not much anyone can do about it, that‘s the limit the FED set

real yields on TIPS are roughly 2% which likely makes them a better bet than ibonds now. IBonds real yield is approx 0.

Do you have data/URL on this that you can share please?

TreasuryDirect. It shows the rates for both kinds of bonds. Today's Ibonds have a real yield of 0.00% and are expected to keep at that rate for a while. The variable yield is based on inflation, which was very high but has been much more muted for the past several months. That flashy 9.62% is going to be much much lower when it swaps.

TIPS currently have a nonzero real yield.

That last link, without the paywall: https://archive.ph/ZKCEi

Thanks - good idea

Yea, start 5 LLCs and have them each by ibonds to get around 10K limit I would be more interested. As is, treasury direct website is fine.

The 10k limit means you'd be lucky to earn 1k a year on I bonds. Hardly worth the hassle if you have a 100k+ portfolio.

I wish instead of QE the government would let people buy much higher amounts of I bonds instead. Seems like a great way to hand out money to people directly instead of via banks.

> I wish instead of QE the government would let people buy much higher amounts of I bonds instead. Seems like a great way to hand out money to people directly instead of via banks.

I think you mean as a supplement to the current QT campaign?

The intent of QE is to stimulate the economy by injecting liquidity into the markets; increasing the limit on annual I bonds purchasable by individuals does the exact opposite of what QE objectively intends by locking that liquidity back up at the Treasury.

At face value, the nominal return on I bonds may be net positive (and perhaps even attractive to some investors in this bear market), but the real return is effectively net zero by design; it's a naive mistake to conflate growth with increase in purchasing power. Besides, when the Fed cut stimulus checks during COVID, their intent was for you to spend, not save by giving it right back to them to hold.

People that have the means to dump six figures into bonds will not spend the proceeds on consumption or investment, which stimulate the economy. They will simply recycle it back into more bonds (a form of saving).

Everyone here is criticizing your product but it's funny that as I type this https://www.treasurydirect.gov/ is completely down. I wish this was available back when I invested and had to navigate my way through that hellish website.

Saw this post, signed up on TreasuryDirect.gov, and it immediately went down. That'll teach me for not using Yotta.

Thank you - Treasury Direct is the worst.

Doesn’t look down to me