I-Bond Quote "Server" v1.1

[ballardian]

Hi all,

There was a discussion before about how to track I-Bonds with their variable rate. I had shared 2 versions of a script I wrote to make this easier. I now have a 3rd more elegant script to offer.

Turns out the US Treasury Department has an API for fetching ‘redemption’ value of I-Bonds. This means there is no math to do it is just a reformatting exercise.

What I’ve done is write a script you can run (manually or a scheduled task) that will download this data, generates tickers, reformat the data, and export it in the format the Fund Manager <local file> server option expects.

Then just point FM at the file generated for the <local file> quote server, set your I-Bonds to the correct ticker, and point each I-Bond investment to the <local file> server. These steps only have to be done once. And now your I-Bonds redemption values will be retrieved like normal quote server retrieves. Auto updating through time with no other action then running it every 6 months to get the new data. No more having to update external csv files with rates and new bond purchases like my last solutions.

As FM mentions price the original I-Bond at $100 and make the shares the amount to get your value to your bond cost. This script uses $100 as the basis for the bond pricing and will return prices as prices above $100.

Ticker Format:

IB + MON + YEAR

MON = First 3 characters of the Month
YEAR = 4 digit year

For example if you bought your I-Bond in April 2021 the ticker is:

IBAPR2021

CHANGELOG:
Version 1.0 - Ini

Some Caveats:

A) For the first year the price is set at $100 per share as you can't redeem them
B) At the 13th month you see the previous interest appear
C) The price reflects the 3 month penalty if it applies to your bond is less than 5 years old
E) The original Sept 1998 bond for some reason didn’t return prices on the first 3 months or so

To Use: Download the .txt file and change the extension to .ps1. Then run it in PowerShell. You may have to change your execution policy to run it
Enjoy

NOTE: This is version 1.1 and I resolved the lack of prices for the first year in this version if you happen to read it before I did this update