Why Should Precious Metals Be in Your Retirement Account?
Monday, March 23, 2015, 5:00 AM | Leave Comment
Your retirement years are a time when you want to have sufficient means to ensure a decent, if not above average, quality of life.
Sure, when you were younger, you understood that a 401k, stocks, bonds, mutual funds and even a couple investment properties might be a good idea to generate the kind of investment returns and passive income you need to pad your future.
But you never spent much time considering what retirement would be like during a time of economic crisis. All it would take is another global financial crisis, such as the one that occurred back in 2007 – 2008, to wipe out your 401k, stock accounts and mutual funds.
As was observed, even those owning investment properties were hit hard by the aforementioned global financial crisis.
Spikes in unemployment made it difficult for many to get jobs. This in turn made it impossible for these individuals to pay their rent on time.
If this sort of scenario played out again, your investment properties would not be much of a financial cushion either.
If you are in need of rental income to ensure you can pay off these investment properties, this could make the situation even worse.
Today, with all the talk of the weakness of the dollar and future economic uncertainty, those edging closer to their retirement years have had to rethink some of the conventional wisdom behind preparing for retirement.
Another factor that started you thinking in this direction is the frequency of retirees returning to the job force to make ends meet.
Clearly, these are folks who did not pad their retirement accounts well enough to weather the financial crunch of their golden years.
These are situations that cause many to ask if precious metals would have been an asset class worthy of adding to their retirement account.
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Protecting Yourself With Gold and Other Precious Metals
Over 40-years ago, former federal reserve chairman, Alan Greenspan, stated, “This is the shabby secret of the welfare statistics’ tirades against gold.
Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth.
Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statistics’ antagonism toward the gold standard.”
Any savvy economist, who has operated in the trenches, will be able to illuminate for the investment minded individuals how important precious metals like gold and silver are to their retirement account.
It is on the shoulders of gold, in particular, that the entire global banking system ultimately depends.
The further this system withdraws from the gold standard, the less stable it becomes.
This realization tends to suggest that gold and other precious metals are an important part of any stable investing strategy.
This is especially the case when one is considering how to develop a stable retirement account.
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Major Purchasing Power
When the value of the dollar depreciates, the dollars you take with you to the store experience a reduction in purchasing power.
This is why people closer to retirement are often shocked by the prices of goods and services today.
A few decades ago, when the dollar was worth more, these same goods and services costs significantly less.
On the other hand, the more scarce tangible assets like gold and silver become, the more their value tends to appreciate with respect to currencies like the dollar.
As a result, precious metals generally retain more purchasing power than paper money.
The gap between these two forms of monetary exchange increases more rapidly as the dollar drifts further from the gold standard.
Simply holding precious metals while this devaluing of paper money is going on is one way to amass significant wealth.
If you are worried that you have a lot of devalued paper assets in other accounts, such as a 401k, it might be time to consider taking control of these assets more directly.
At Gold IRA Reporter, you will be able to learn more about the advantages of a self directed IRA with the ability to introduce precious metals into your retirement account.
With your assets more firmly under your direct control, you will be able to take a more active role in establishing your future wealth.
