IBonds!!! PAGING jhogue!

Discussion of the Bond portion of the Permanent Portfolio

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vnatale
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IBonds!!! PAGING jhogue!

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 20, 2022 4:00 pm

I am 1 for 3 in getting $5,000 tax returns overpayments to buy $5,000 worth of IBonds. The two failed attempts resulted in me getting $5,000 refunds.

The one time it did work I received paper bonds in these denominations:

$1,000 - 4
$500 - 1
$200 - 1
$50 - 6

I understand that if somehow these were lost or destroyed I can communicate with Treasury Direct to get them replaced? If so, I assume I need to communicate certain information from each bond to them?

I am now primed to enter that relevant information into Quicken but I cannot tell what is the relevant information. Each of these bonds has an incredible amount of numbers on them.

Directly under my name and address is a line of four sets of numbers. The first two seem to be about 20 characters long while the third is only six and the last is one.

Beneath those ...

To the left of the emblem seems to be a uniform number that associates with the bond denomination. To the right of the emblem are all unique numbers (about 14 characters).

On the lower right are small font unique 10 character numbers. Under those numbers in the bottom right are numbers that somewhat correlate to the numbers to the right of the emblem. Their first letters seem to correlate with the denomination while each one ends in an I.

Thanks for whatever assistance you can give!

I could also take a picture of each one of these but I always prefer to have all my financial information of any type to be in Quicken.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Xan
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Re: IBonds!!! PAGING jhogue!

Post by Xan » Tue Sep 20, 2022 4:27 pm

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vnatale
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Re: IBonds!!! PAGING jhogue!

Post by vnatale » Tue Sep 20, 2022 4:34 pm

Xan wrote:
Tue Sep 20, 2022 4:27 pm

Does this help?
Attaching images to transactions and accounts


I had been aware of that feature but have never used it.

Quicken used to be owned by Intuit, which owns QuickBooks. Intuit strongly pushes attaching documents within QuickBooks. Good idea except that all those images / documents greatly increase the file size of QuickBooks which then leads you to from outgrowing the least expensive QuickBooks product and being forced to use a far more expensive version of QuickBooks.

My Quicken file is 64 MB. I have been using it for all since 1994 plus have selected information in it from 1969 to 1993.

My greatest fear is that it gets too big so that it no longer properly works.

I may, though, make an exception for attaching images of the bonds in Quicken since it makes total logical sense for those images to be there.

Thanks for reminding of this feature which I had not been thinking about when I originally wrote in this topic.
Above provided by: Vinny, who always says: "I only regret that I have but one lap to give to my cats." AND "I'm a more-is-more person."
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Re: IBonds!!! PAGING jhogue!

Post by jhogue » Wed Sep 21, 2022 8:45 am

Vinny,

All paper I-bonds have a serial number with a unique 11-digit alpha numeric. Your tax refund generated paper I-bonds all start with the Roman numeral letter M, D, R, or L, which identifies them as $1,000, $500, $200, or $50 value bonds respectively. If your paper I-bonds are ever lost, stolen, or destroyed you can fill out a claim form on the TreasuryDirect website listing those bonds by serial number.

I keep a list of my paper I-bonds in a spreadsheet at home. I keep a second copy in a safe deposit box along with my paper I-bonds and some of my physical gold. At least once each year I visit my local banker and my safe deposit box to update my growing pile of paper I-bonds and replace my old spreadsheet with a new spreadsheet.

You can also convert your paper I-bonds to electronic form if you like. I don't do that because I like having some bonds that are held outside of our banking system, but that is a story for another day.
“Groucho Marx wrote:
A stock trader asked him, "Groucho, where do you put all your money?" Groucho was said to have replied, "In Treasury bonds", and the trader said, "You can't make much money on those." Groucho said, "You can if you have enough of them!"
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