Life of an Investor

Obviously, your portfolio should be diversified.  Especially with the current economic insecurity, this is doubly important.  Now, I’m an optimist and fully believe that the economy will make a recovery and that most of this is due to “bad feelings”.  If you’re still surving, then your neighbor probably is too. 

With that being said, there is always the possibility of a serious recession or even a depression before the turnaround.  This morning, I met with some friends over coffee and bagels and one of them mentioned that they have been buying silver recently.  Not funds that invest in silver, but actual, physical silver bars.  He told us that he is purchasing these from http://www.bulliondirect.com.  He said that the first order was a leap of faith, but so far, he has been pleased.  This got me thinking a bit.  What would happen if the economy took a nosedive tomorrow and your bank accounts and cash on hand were essentially worthless?  How long could you survive.  If you’re well stocked at home, you may make it for a month or two, but most of us would probably be lucky to get through two weeks.  One thing I can almost guarantee though is that there will be people willing to sell you necessities if you have silver or gold coins to offer.   

There are a few pros and cons to owning precious metals. 

Pros

1. More secure than any country’s currency
2. You can physically hold your investment in the palm of your hand, or in a safe place.
3. Silver and Gold have never been worthless.
4. You can buy in small denominations (1 oz coins) for use in bartering in case of doomsday scenarios.
5. Historically have risen in value.
6. Great items to pass on to children or give as gifts.
7. Government and other organizations won’t have easily accessible records about your assets.

Cons

1. Your investment does not earn interest.
2. Can be easily stolen/lost if you keep in your home.
3. Harder to purchase/sell when dealing with physical items.
4. Fairly expensive to get into.  Silver is affordable at under $20 for a one ounce coin, but gold is around $900 for a 1 ounce coin.  That’s one coin that you don’t want to accidently roll down the sewer grate.
5. I can’t think of any more right now.

So I visited the website listed above, picked out some silver coins and small silver bars (10 oz.).  If for no other reason, it will just be cool to have these to show the kids and possible pass on to them at some point.  As a kid, I always thought that when I grew up I wanted to buy a gold bar like you always see in pictures of Fort Knox; they had to be several pounds.  Little did I know that a ten ounce bar (just over half a pound) would be in the $9,000 price range.  I guess silver will have to do for now.

———-
If you like, or can at least stand to read what I write, make sure you add my RSS Feed to your list so you don’t miss a single post. If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read this.

Photo courtesy of

Share This

Close this WindowBookmark and Share This Page

Save to Browser Favorites

Ask backflip blinklist BlogBookmark Bloglines BlogMarks Blogsvine BUMPzee! CiteULike co.mments Connotea del.icio.us

DotNetKicks Digg diigo dropjack.com dzone Facebook Fark Faves Feed Me Links Friendsite folkd.com Furl

Google Hugg Jeqq Kaboodle linkaGoGo LinksMarker Ma.gnolia Mister Wong Mixx MySpace MyWeb Netvouz

Newsvine PlugIM popcurrent Propeller Reddit Rojo Segnalo Shoutwire Simpy sk*rt Slashdot Sphere

Sphinn Spurl.net Squidoo StumbleUpon Technorati ThisNext Webride Windows Live Yahoo!

Email This to a Friend

Copy HTML: 

If you like this then please subscribe to the RSS Feed.

Powered by Bookmarkify™

More »

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 31st, 2008 at 4:02 pm and is filed under Invest:Precious Metals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.