The Yearlong Wait to Transfer Bonds Out of TreasuryDirect

13 pointsposted 7 hours ago
by impish9208
(wsj.com)

16 Comments

christophilus

7 hours ago

It looks like it’s running on Sharepoint which has the distinction of being the technology behind nearly all of the worst sites I’ve ever used.

Schiendelman

4 hours ago

It's not the technology's fault. It's that Sharepoint is one of the few stacks that caters to enterprises that are deeply antiquated internally.

Salesforce has the same business and often the same perception as a result.

It's almost always the client's decisions causing the problem, whether they skimp on UX flow or have terrible internal business processes.

grepfru_it

5 hours ago

I used sharepoint at Fannie Mae, circa 20ish years ago, and it was the best smoothest setup I have ever seen. And I mean I hated sharepoint before and after but this one just worked and was connected to external systems that also just worked. I was so impressed

HelloMcFly

3 hours ago

Agreed - in my current org. it works really well! In my last org. and the one before it was truly a misery.

snowwrestler

5 hours ago

The article is too polite to say this directly, but the issue is that people made a bad decision to purchase marketable securities via TreasuryDirect. You can buy these through any brokerage account and they are easily sold there as well.

Transferring securities is not something people should need to do very often, and as a consequence it is not optimized in general. The one time I had to do it, I had to hand-sign paperwork and get a medallion stamp as well. This was to move stocks from one private (not govt) IRA provider to another without selling them.

I have a TreasuryDirect account but only use it to purchase and hold inflation-protected bonds.

Larrikin

5 hours ago

Why should anyone need an account from a private business to buy bonds, why do you think that people deserve to be punished for buying directly from the government, and why do you think this is common knowledge?

Supermancho

an hour ago

> Why should anyone need an account from a private business to buy bonds,

That wasn't asserted. It's a more efficient route. Just as Door Dash is faster than having food mailed via USPS.

> why do you think that people deserve to be punished for buying directly from the government

This was not a claim either, but I'll be gracious. The government never makes inefficiency an explicit goal. The consequence is the incidental effect of a massive bureaucracy. This is common knowledge.

> and why do you think this is common knowledge?

Need to come down to the DMV or Social Security office? Gonna be a few hours in many localities. If you're lucky enough to use the website, maybe a few minutes. Scale this up to the Federal Level and less frequently exercised services.

From secondhand experience (my wife): Getting a first name change and have no fingerprints? It'll be months of exchanges before the FBI nixes the application.

Eridrus

3 hours ago

If this was a private entity folks would consider this completely unacceptable and basically theft of these people's money.

user

an hour ago

[deleted]

everybodyknows

4 hours ago

Furthermore tax reporting remains stuck at a '90s level of automation: 1099 form info cannot be imported automatically into Turbotax. You're spared this nuisance only so long as you merely acquire and hold "Savings Bonds".

idontwantthis

an hour ago

Do they let you type in your password yet? Last time I looked at it you had to click an onscreen keyboard.

jrussino

an hour ago

Yes, this was updated sometime recently (in the past few years).

tombert

6 hours ago

Huh, I use TreasuryDirect all the time to buy T-Bills. It’s always worked as expected, no long wait.

kevinventullo

3 hours ago

The article is about transferring assets out of TresuryDirect, which is required if you want to sell them before maturity.

jakedata

5 hours ago

My error was allowing my son to turn 18 while I had college money invested in his name. As soon as he came of age the account locked us all out until we established his identity with signed and notarized documents sent via the mail. Once we re-established control over the account we were unable to transfer the funds out without another round of verification involving the bank. All in all it took nearly 6 months to liberate the tuition money we had parked in I-bonds. You have been warned.