I’m Too Old to Invest in Physical Gold or Silver

Ask the Expert

Damon Geller
President
Contact Damon

As we all get older, naturally we become more cautious about our investments, and that’s a good thing. Yet none of us would ever say, “I’m too old to protect my wealth,” or “I’m too old to grow my wealth,” or “I’m too old to take a defensive position and hedge the collapsing monetary world around me and protect myself from the madmen trying to centrally plan the global economy, and failing!.” Okay, the last one might be a little dramatic, but the concept that, once you’re old your money belongs in a bank, is a very dangerous one. I would argue that with negative real interest rates (banks paying a lower interest rate than inflation), it is even more important for a retiree or someone on a fixed income to have a hedge against dollar debasement and inflation. The older you get (and no longer work) the more important safe yield becomes.

Once you become too old to work anymore, you have to look at the longevity of your wealth and invest it in such a way that it lasts longer than you. If or when all this money printing becomes real inflation and your expenses go up but your income doesn’t, you better have your savings in a safe place where it can get yield. If expenses are rising -- energy costs, water, food, gas, etc. -- gold will be rising too by its very nature as a dollar-denominated hard asset. So owning gold is even more important as you get into the “golden years.”