Fast and Easy: Your Virtual Savings Bond

It’s tax time. And one of the lawyers in my office was going ape over IRS requirements on filing various forms. Specifically, the IRS has decreed that all W-2’s must be filed electronically. If you file a handwritten W-2, it will be assumed that there is fraud and the filer will be subject to audit. The rules are a little less stringent with 1099’s, but still you have to be a Philadelphia lawyer and CPA to figure who does or does not get a 1099. All of this, of course, must be verified by YOUR signature on YOUR tax return under the severest of penalties…and the threat in the booklet reads like a horror movie. Another gift from your friendly progressive Obama who is afraid you may make a nickel.

Even more disturbing, and almost poignantly sad, my buddy who has several grandchildren, went to buy his granddaughter a birthday savings bond. Guess what!!! No more paper savings bonds. Instead, you get an electronic account that you may only access through use of a computer. I found that interesting since grandparents are among the least computer literate demographics in the United States. I asked my friend if doesn’t this discriminate against senior citizens? He said Obama doesn’t care. Obamacare will make sure we won't have to worry about these folks too long!!!!

Is this what we have become in this country? Obama blew ½ billion dollars on a phony solar panel company owned by one of his cronies. He threw away another ½ billion dollars on a luxury car maker based in Scandinavia…that’s our money given to a foreign car maker making cars that cost in excess of $125,000.00. Let’s not even talk about the cost of the extravagant vacations for him and his family. And you can’t allow senior citizens buy paper bonds for their grandchildren? Obama and cronies...talk about being in the 1%!!!

Computer snobbery is a symptom of the me generations that are now approaching their 40’s. There is no use for anyone who has worked hard, been screwed with their pension, and now have to struggle at a computer to do the most basic of tasks that used to be done with ink, paper and a stamp. Use ink and a printed tax form…you will be assumed to be a tax cheat. Really?? And you don’t have to bother to buy a Series E bond if you're not computer literate.

I am fortunate that I have a degree of computer savvy. I pay all my bills on line using the bill pay service offered by my bank. I maintain all of my accounts, both broker and bank, on line. I shop online, a lot!!! On the other hand, I have difficulty with things like setting up flat screen televisions and digital alarm clocks, which should be outlawed!! It is frustrating and demoralizing when I have to call somebody in to help me do things like change the time on the clock in my car.

The dichotomy between computer literate America and computer illiterate America is an obviously shrinking problem, and will be gone entirely in 25 years. But answer me this. How do you give a “savings electronic bond account” in a Christmas envelope? And how many of those accounts will be hacked, or simply lost in the shuffle as the grandchild grows older, and Grandma and Grandpa forget it is there, or simply not tell anyone before they die?

We can do better than this!!!!