I love TreasuryDirect! It’s a free site run by the US Government to allow all citizens to buy US Government debt securities. You can buy several types of savings bonds, and more importantly, you can directly participate in treasury bill, note, and bond auctions. This means that individual investors with as little as $100 can invest on perfectly equal footing with huge institutional investors. They all get exactly the same pricing. It’s amazing! I don’t think there’s any other situation in which an individual can buy a security for such a small amount and get exactly the same terms as CALPERS buying hundreds of millions of securities at the same time. It’s a true egalitarian marvel.
It’s actually slightly dumb for me to even write this article because the service is directly competitive with my core service offering as a fee based financial adviser. The more that my clients or potential clients invest with TreasuryDirect, the less they invest with me, and the less money I make. But I don’t care, it’s such a cool system that I want lots of people to know about it anyway. But before we dive into TreasuryDirect, let’s take a look at how US Treasury auctions work…
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