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Harry Sit has written an article on his website, The Finance Buff, this morning 9/14/2026, describing the new requirement for using ID.me to log into a TreasuryDirect account. I found the article particularity informative as, like him, I had previously obtained a ID.me account.
His closing comment, “You have two bad choices. Either give sensitive information to a private company picked by the government agency or sell everything and pay taxes. I really don’t like this, but I don’t think they will change”, accurately reflects my thoughts on this change.
I will likely wait a while, maybe a long while, before I log in to Treasury Direct using ID.me to give time to let any system bugs to be resolved.
My experience creating an ID.me account can be best described as “hinky,” glitches that indicated a misstep but then seconds later it worked. I also got several “retry” prompts. Based on a comment on this thread I expected trouble, and an interview process, because my credit is frozen, but nope, I was able to establish the account anyway. Yes, I’ll be sticking with “hinky” to describe the process.
Maybe this is a digression, but I had planned for some time to convert I bonds from paper to electronic and finally decided to do it before the change in login requirements, using my already established treasury direct account. I did this just ten days ago so I haven’t checked to see if they were converted. I thought the directions on the website for converting were pretty clear – the only problem I had was that I mistakenly was entering a “1” at the end of the number when preparing a manifest to mail in, instead of an “I,” so the number wasn’t being accepted as a valid bond number. Sharper eyes in my household figured out the problem. When I I made the same mistake on the calculator part of the website, my mistake was ignored and the value of my bonds with a “1” at the end was calculated. Go figure.
I’m sorry I ever bought an Ibond and hope to liquidate my small account before the deadline. My credit union recently merged into a larger one, so my checking account was changed. TD cannot, for some reason, verify my new account. I even got an agent on the phone, no success. Every other financial institution I deal with was able to verify my new bank account, not TD. The IRS accepted quarterly tax payment from the new account, but TD cannot verify it. I now have to mail in, USPS, a form with all my information with Signature Guarantee. I just want out.
Thanks for your comment. A number of comments on Humble Dollar and other sites I read gives me pause about continuing to buy I Bonds. I have not had the administrative headaches you and others have had and I certainly do not want them for myself or my heirs.
Converting my login at TD to ID.me is a distant secondary consideration on if I am willing to continue buying I Bonds if TD does not improve their customer service when something occurs for a person like you who has taken reasonable actions which are deemed to be insufficient.