If you keep I bonds, EE bonds, or Treasuries in a TreasuryDirect account, the password you use today stops working on October 28. Starting Sunday, September 13, you can replace it. It takes your Social Security number and a photo ID.
Do it Sunday. Not on October 27.
What is actually changing
Treasury is handing the front door of TreasuryDirect to ID.me, a private identity company Treasury calls a “trusted, government-verified identity provider” and which already fronts other federal services. TreasuryDirect’s own notice is blunt about the timing: starting September 13 “you can begin using ID.me to log in to TreasuryDirect,” and on October 28 “ID.me will be required to log in to TreasuryDirect.”
You will need two government-issued forms of identity to get through it. Your SSN, plus a driver’s license, state ID, passport, or passport card. No fee is listed.
The part that keeps this from being an emergency
Your money is not on the line, and Treasury says so in plain words. Funds “will not be permanently frozen or seized after the deadline,” and you “can easily restore online access at any time after October 28, 2026, by completing the ID.me setup process.”
So miss it and nothing is lost. What you lose is the door.
That still costs you on exactly one kind of day: the day you want to cash a bond, redirect a maturing security, or fix the bank account the money is supposed to land in. TreasuryDirect is not a bank branch. There is no counter to walk into. If the login is dead that week, so is the transaction, and a savings bond you cannot reach is not an emergency fund. Every payback number in our savings calculator quietly assumes you can get at the money.
The real risk is not the deadline
It is the email about the deadline.
A forced login change on a government money site is the best cover a scammer gets all year. Treasury clearly knows it, because the notice comes with its own warning: “The Treasury Department does not send unsolicited e-mails asking for personal or financial information, or demand fees to release funds. Before you enter or change your information anywhere, ensure that the URL says treasurydirect.gov and that you are logged into the TreasuryDirect system.”
Translation: nobody real is going to rush you. Any message that adds a countdown and a link is the thing you are protecting yourself from.
Do this
Sunday, type treasurydirect.gov into the address bar yourself. Not a link, not a search ad, not the button in an email. Log in the old way one last time, start the ID.me setup, and have the SSN and photo ID in front of you before you begin.
Managing a minor’s linked account or an entity account? ID.me verifies you, the account manager, not the entity.
And if October 28 goes by and you forgot, skip the panic. Set it up in November. The bonds keep paying whatever rate they were paying the entire time. While you are in there, check that rate against a plain high-yield account and the rest of the savings hub. A locked door is a hassle. A bad rate is a bill.
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