Anyone use Treasury Direct for T-bills?

So I want to start buying T-bills directly from the Treasury instead of through my brokerage. Currently getting ~4.5% on 4-week T-bills which is better than my HYSA. But the TreasuryDirect website looks like it was made during the Bush administration.

A few questions:
1. Is it actually reliable? Like will my money be safe if this site looks this ancient?
2. How does the auction process work? Do I have to bid or what?
3. Can I auto-reinvest when T-bills mature?
4. How does tax reporting work? Do they send a 1099?

I currently have about $40k I want to put in T-bills. Am I better off just buying them through Fidelity instead?

I've been buying T-bills on TreasuryDirect for about 2 years. Let me answer your questions:

1. Yes it's reliable and your money is as safe as it can possibly be -- it's literally lent to the US government. The website looking like garbage is... unfortunately just how the government builds websites. Treasury.gov, IRS.gov, they're all bad. It works though.

2. You don't have to competitively bid. Select "noncompetitive" bidding which means you accept whatever rate the auction sets. This is what 99% of individual investors do. You specify the amount, pick the term (4-week, 8-week, 13-week, 17-week, 26-week, or 52-week), and submit.

3. Yes, you can set up auto-reinvest. When a T-bill matures, TreasuryDirect will automatically purchase a new one at the next auction. I have my 4-week T-bills on auto-reinvest and haven't had to touch it in months.

4. They issue a 1099-INT at tax time. T-bill interest is exempt from state/local tax which is a nice bonus if you live in a high-tax state. Only federal tax applies.

The Fidelity vs TreasuryDirect question is real though. Fidelity lets you buy T-bills at auction too, and the experience is much better. The main advantage of TreasuryDirect is you can buy I Bonds (only available there) and you're dealing directly with Treasury with no intermediary.

Honestly? Buy T-bills through Fidelity or Schwab instead of TreasuryDirect. Same rates, same auctions, much better interface.

The ONLY reason to use TreasuryDirect is for I Bonds (which you can only buy there). For T-bills, there's no advantage to using the Treasury website directly. Your brokerage submits the same noncompetitive bid and you get the same rate.

At Fidelity you can buy T-bills with a few clicks, they show up in your account next to your other investments, and tax reporting is consolidated on one 1099. At TreasuryDirect your T-bills are in a completely separate account with its own terrible login system (it uses a virtual keyboard for your password which is both annoying and arguably less secure than a regular password field).

I made the mistake of starting on TreasuryDirect and later moved everything to Fidelity. Should have just gone to Fidelity from the start.

The virtual keyboard thing on TreasuryDirect deserves its own rant. You have to click individual letters on a virtual keyboard to enter your password. You can't paste. You can't use a password manager properly. It takes forever. And if you misclick you have to start over because there's no backspace that works consistently.

Also the account recovery process is from another era. If you lose access you have to mail in a physical form. MAIL. IN 2026.

Use it for I Bonds only. For everything else, use your brokerage.

lol the virtual keyboard. I forgot about that. I set up a treasury direct account in like 2023 to buy i bonds and the login experience almost made me give up. its unbelievable how bad it is

but yeah your money is safe. its the US treasury. if they default on t bills we have bigger problems than a bad website

I'll add one thing about TreasuryDirect that nobody's mentioned: the $10 million per auction limit per TIN (social security number). Not relevant for most people but if you're parking serious money in T-bills you should know there's a cap.

For the OP's $40k, honestly just buy through Fidelity or Schwab. Set up a T-bill ladder (buy some each week at different maturities) and let them auto-roll. You'll get ~4.5% with essentially zero risk and state tax exemption.

The state tax exemption is the underrated part of T-bills. If you're in California or New York paying 9-10% state income tax, a 4.5% T-bill is effectively equivalent to a 5.0% HYSA after you account for the state tax savings. That makes T-bills better than most HYSAs for people in high-tax states.

I'm in Florida so no state tax for me but for others its a meaningful difference.