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Retirement Planning: Why Gold will never go out of fashion
Gold IRA for retirement planning
To take or not to take the plunge?
It’s not long now before many start to think of retirement and how they can protect their investments using precious metals like gold or silver in an account like the individual retirement account (IRA). There are so many ways to protect yourself against inflation, market crashes and the fall of the dollar. The fall of the dollar and another market crash is still very fresh in everyone’s mind since the last one in 1997. The effect of that crash and subsequent recession was the rise in the value of precious metals like gold from low’s of 200 dollars an ounce to over 1000 dollars in 2013. For many investors, gold has also acted as a hedge against inflation which is probably the number one reason many choose to add gold into their portfolios like a Gold IRA.
Why so precious?
There is one key element that makes gold a precious material and that is scarcity. This was the reason why the United States used gold to back it’s currency until the 70′s. The act to remove gold as a currency backing is in hindsight a very bad call as successive governments have chosen to use the Fed’s printing press to pump fiat money into the economic system of the United States and in return, we have seen the rise in inflation and devaluation of our currency and spending power. Fiat money can be easily devalued and the value manipulated by governments. Think about this for a second, the U.S government hands over paper which it promises to pay you based on the printed amount on the paper? This is the equivalent of an IOU but luckily so far no major crisis in the U.S unlike countries like Zimbabwe and Germany who have suffered hyperinflation in recent memory in 2008 and 1921 respectively. In the case of Germany, the currency become so worthless that it was being used as wallpaper and toilet roll. This is the effect of constant pumping and printing of money with no limits by governments.
Your retirement savings and how it will melt away
We have all worked hard and when we retire, we want enough to live on and enjoy all the things we simply pass by while we contributed to the great nation but unfortunately you have to count on a little bit of luck. Let’s say you have been saving for the best part of 20 years, you have to hope and pray that you are not in an unfortunate position like many who got caught out b the recent recession and stock market crash or correction. You also have to hope that the following does not happen; stock market failure, rapid levels foreclosures, unemployment, uncontrolled government debt and currency failures of sovereign states. On the last point, if you think sovereign states can’t have currency failures then I take you back to the EURO. If you think that story is over, you better think again. Whatever you earn or save one of these things will likely hap