Apr 15, 2013

Hedge part 2

After some careful discussion with the CFO (aka MrsZ), we decided to put some money into tangibles. Beyond the accumulated brass and lead, that is.

I had a small 401k floating around in never-never land from an employer I left more than ten years ago. I never rolled it over, moved it, or did anything with it. The value hasn't increased appreciably in most of those ten years.

Therefore ... I cashed it out. I took the hit on value and taxes, and dumped the entire remaining amount into silver. Mostly bullion, but a fairly sizable pile of "junk" silver as well.

For those who don't quite get precious metals: I am not speculating, I am not investing, I am not hoping the prices go up... I am hedging. I will have a small amount of a tangible product tucked away that is relatively inflation-resistant. If we go all Weimar-Republic in the coming years, I'll still have a little bit of value tucked away.

(And that is why I got some junk silver in addition to bullion rounds: a mercury dime has about 0.07 troy ounces of silver content, which makes it handy for trades on smaller stuff.)

And yes - I'm planning to gently increase the storage on a regular basis.

1 comment:

Bob S. said...

Zercool,

I understand what you have done and have done similar myself.

I moved a chunk of existing savings into junk silver over a couple of months.

I also plan on increasing that amount when I get 'spare' cash.
Right now, I'm looking at pulling money out of an orphan 401(k) and using it to re-fi Bunker BS to get a much lower rate and shorter term.

I think we are going to see continued 'invisible inflation' and erosion of buying power of the dollar.