Ron20 said:
Couple points to make about Dave Ramsey and gold. First, Dave Ramsey is worth several hundred million dollars, so I have to believe he knows a thing or 20 about making money. Second you never hear of billionaires buying up massive quantities of gold. And they know a thing or 25 about making money.
My wife and I went through the program and paid off almost 25k and saved an additional 10k to get my wife a decent car over a period of 2 years and an income of 60k. We now are stable enough that I don't have to have a job while I go to school for 2 years. Call me crazy, but I believe Dave.
Real estate will have the highest value when it hits the fan and assuming gold will have any value in a collapsed economy, your 5k or 10k in saved gold won't get you through it. Sell your gold, buy some land, real estate value has a better track record.
I don't know who Dave Ramsey is and have never listened to him, so I cannot comment on what he says.
However, your comment about billionaires intrigues me. I am wondering how many billionaires, or even millionaires you know and have spoken to about their investments? You might be correct though that not many of them have been buying gold in the past, in the sense that sometimes it takes a while for certain investments to take hold. I would bet that as time goes on and our economy further tanks more billionaires and millionaires will convert some of the wealth into PMs. Just because someone has that much wealth does not necessarily mean they know everything about investments per se. Some have inherited their wealth and some have specific niche areas that have made them wealthy, but that does not mean they know everything there is to know about how to preserve that wealth over time as the economy changes. Fortunes are lost and made constantly.
I do know a couple of coin dealers very well, and they have told me in the past that they have regular customers who buy $100K-$250K in gold and silver (mostly gold) EACH month for several months at a time, and some for the past couple of years. While they are probably not billionaires, they have to be fairly wealthy to be able to afford that. Further, very wealthy folks tend to be quite secretive about their investments and won't go blabbing on a blog, forum or the news about what they own.
Real estate right now is a terrible investment unless it is farm land or similar. You will see residential and commercial real estate fall further into the next couple of years in my opinion. At some time it will be very wise to convert some PMs into residential or commercial real estate, but I would not be doing that now personally.
Foreign central banks have been loading up on tons of gold in the recent past. I believe they might know something that us "little people" don't know. But I would not recommend a person put all their wealth into PMs, better to be diversified.
Everyone needs to make their own personal decisions about investing and it is better not to take anyone's specific advice in my opinion. But if I personally had to follow some else's advice I would look for people who have made fortunes and seem to be consistently correct in their calls, like Jim Rogers, who used to be in with Soros years ago and from what I have seen and read is correct much of the time. He is very bullish on commodities in general and bearish on the dollar.
Jim
