Personal Finance and Investment

Gold certificates, for the uninformed, are essentially the same as the paper dollar used to be. Back when the US and the UK were still on the gold standard, it was better to carry around a piece of paper representing gold than it was to carry around, say, a half pound of gold in your pocket.

The abolishing of the gold standard is, of course, why we have to deal with things like inflation, recession, depression and so on, and that’s how gold certificates are inflation-proof.

A gold certificate may not be spendable, as in, you can’t go into a gas station and say “Give me a half ounce of gold on pump number three”, but the certificate does represent some actual, tangible gold locked away in a safe somewhere. That gold technically belongs to you, but you use the certificate so that you don’t have to worry about buying a safe to keep it in.

How do you invest in these certificates? Well, exactly the same you invest in real gold, because that’s essentially what it is…

Be Safe

Gold is the safe investment. The get rich overnight people can go ahead and play the lottery and waste their money on those “Be a Millionaire!” scams. The people who want to make absolutely certain that their money is worth something ten, twenty years from now go with gold. If you want to get rich as quick as you possibly can, you’ll find gold incredibly dull. There’s no risk for the gambler in you, sorry.

Don’t Play the Buy/Sell Game

Some people will invest in gold and think “I’m gonna turn this market on its head!” They play the buy/sell game, they hit the market and scream at their brokers and… Surprise surprise, make very little on the short term. Gold’s not about the short term. Sure, if gold is having a particularly great day for some reason, sell a little off. But… Keep some of it, too. Because the price might just keep going up.

Be Very Patient

In the gold game, you absolutely have to be patient. The value of the metal is tied directly to the value of the dollar, and conversely, so as inflation gets worse, the metal gets better. If you want to get rich in a day’s time, go ahead, play the lottery, but if you want something to retire on, get some gold and watch it improve in value as time goes by. This is how the real, good, smart investments work: Over time.