Commodities, Gold, Saving money

Thought I'd write a quite post on saving money since I think it's going to be important in the coming years.

Basically, I believe in buying Gold and Silver now before it keeps becoming more and more expensive. I'll tell you why.

What we're going to see is inflation. The reason is because there is so much debt (national, and otherwise) the best option for Americans (even though it is, in my mind, immoral) is to inflate away that debt. I.e. the US government will print money to pay back Chinese and other foreign investors and bond holders. This printing of money naturally will make US dollars cheaper, make everyone's savings worth less in terms of real objects (cars, food, houses, gold). Other governments are having similar issues and will also see their currencies inflated. The US dollar might not lose much ground relative to other currencies but I bet commodities will become much more expensive.

While holding good companies will presumably also be a good option in the long run, it is difficult to choose companies you know will survive an impending financial crisis, and there are other things that in my mind suggest stocks are going to be less attractive in the coming years, but I won't get into that now as I don't have any good evidence for some of my conjectures.

So, with inflation, things are going to get more expensive. We should move our money away from dollars and into "stuff" that maintains it's value. Inherently everything has value in society: even gold is used industrially and in jewelry. Other things might have more intrinsic value (gold one can do without in a pinch, food is pretty necessary), but all those things also inherently lose value over time. Gold does not, which makes it perfect for maintaining wealth. If it were possible to track the current price of say grain, corn, cotton over a long period of time, this would provide a viable alternative to buying gold as a way of saving money. Actually some ETFs exist which track futures prices, but they have issues and lose value relative to the actual value of the commodity. Gold ETFs track the spot price of gold a lot better. As do Silver and Platinum.

Anyway, as more people realize that their dollars aren't worth a lot, and Gold (and other metals) are a good option for preserving wealth, there simply wont be enough of these metals to go around. The value of them is going to increase A LOT as people try to buy them. And that value will be maintained. Although there will be spikes and dips from speculation, investors will push the price up over the long run.

It would be great to get paid in Gold, not dollars.