Date Calculation based on today

I am doing a database read to get the date from this field. I need to do an if statement to check where it sits based on "today"... what am I doing wrong... tried with and without the curly brackets, etc??
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that will not work, you will need to format the data as a timestamp, like this:

{date:U$(var:read_data...)}

same for the other var, which is wrong, what are you trying to get with {$currentdate} ?

The {$currentdate} was trying to read today's date.
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In my scenario I have a date in the database. If it is before today's date do one thing, if it's after today's date do another.
It's going to be a piece of equiement with an expiration date.

so compare {date:U} and {date:U$(var:read_data.....)}