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I Bought Physical Gold for the First Time

It only took 4 days but I succeeded in one of my 2018 goals and objectives (or at least I started to succeed since it was a year long goal) – I bought a tiny bit of physical gold.  Worry not, I am not turning into a gold-bug , I still believe over the long term that my stock investments will be a better return on investment.  Seems appropriate to start with why I never thought I’d ever buy gold, and then the eventual semi-turn around.

Why I Never Thought I’d Buy Gold

Gold as a purchase for a retailer investor never made a lot of sense to me.  Truth be told it to a large extent still doesn’t – as you’ll see below I am taking a tiny microcosm of my investable assets and buying gold.  To a retail investor such as myself or probably you, gold doesn’t actually do anything.  It isn’t building a business, it isn’t paying you dividends, in large part it isn’t really used for things beyond some jewelry and semiconductors like other commodities (you don’t go a single day without ‘using’ an expendable oil based product).

Then we have the opinion of someone who I respect, admire, and am a semi-fanboy of, Warren Buffet,

You could take all the gold that’s ever been mined, and it would fill a cube 68 feet in each direction. For what that’s worth at current gold prices, you could buy all—not some—of the farmland in the U.S. Plus, you could buy 16 Exxon Mobils, plus have $1 trillion of walking-around money. Or you could have a big cube of metal. Which would you take? Which is going to produce more value?

So if I don’t understand why to buy gold, and the legend I respect the most also does not get the purchase…why did I want to start investing in this asset class?

Why I decided to Buy Gold

I am having a real problem with the market and the world in general right this second.  All major U.S. markets are still skyrocketing after an 8 year bull market.  Just today, the Dow hit a milestone of 25,000:

10yr Graph DowCrypto Currencies are going completely nuts.  I am watching houses in my neighborhood going up for sale and down within a week or so at ridiculous pricing.  Just a few months ago, I started to move my new 401(k) contributions to cash instead of the market…and that has hurt my short term returns.

I don’t have the particular gall or brashness to sell it all.  I said before I am not a gold bug.  I don’t know when, how, or to what extent, a correction is going to occur, but is it the worst thing in the world to put a few dollars into something that has been used as some type of currency for the past few millennium?

So why am I purchasing it? Because as my plan shows below it is such a small amount to call it a hedge would be an insult to the word.  Rather, I look at it as a why not? My plan is to purchase a tiny amount ($50 to $150/mo) every month or two.  First few months of course it’ll seem silly, as did me saving a few hundred a month into my cash account to buy my house, or in my dividend account, but eventually it all adds up.  In that same vein, what are the odds that I wake up in a few years and be upset that I have a ‘pile’ of physical, tangible gold? Knowing myself the chance is near zero.

My Plan to Purchase Gold

As alluded to before my goal in 2018 and probably beyond is to buy $50 to $150 worth of gold per month.  I preferred to find a monthly option where I sent $50 with the option to increase as I went forward, but I wasn’t able to find any site beyond a minimum of $100.  I wasn’t quite comfortable with that amount, although I may be in the very near future.  Instead for my first purchase I went to one of the many gold peddling websites and about my first 2.5 grams of gold…with free shipping of course!

Have you ever bought gold before?

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8 COMMENTS

  1. I think it’s cool to build up your assets in general. Whether it’s stocks, bonds, real estate or precious metals. I started buying gold and silver about ten years ago for the simple reason that I’d like to have it instead of not, if that makes any sense to you. Yes, I know it just sits there, doesn’t produce any income but there is just something primal and innate that comes to the forefront when you actually hold and feel a gold or silver bar. It just feels real. It’s been a while since I bought gold but I’m happy that I did and it’s a nice way to build up an “emergency fund” of sorts that is not easily spent. Cash in a bank can easily be used for non-emergency stuff. My gold/silver just sits there and it’s a good feeling knowing that I have it if a real emergency comes up and I need to liquidate it. Welcome aboard the precious metal train.

    • Thanks for the warm welcome! I like the idea of building that super emergency fund with the tangible precious metals. It would take a pretty ridiculous emergency to get your butt down to a dealer to trade it in for currency to be spent, but if you needed to you could (and have been able to since the beginning of recorded history).

  2. I’ve never bought gold before and likely never will own physical metals. That’s primarily because of the storage of the gold. You can’t keep it in a safe deposit box at the bank, well you can, but I wouldn’t trust it to be safe there in the event that the economic SHTF because I don’t think I could then get it out to actually use it. So that means storage at the house and a safe and frankly I just don’t want to deal with all of that. But as a “hedge” standpoint I can’t say it’s a bad play. For centuries gold has been used as a medium of exchange and there’s no reason for it not to revert back to that if things get bad. Plus it should be a solid inflation hedge to at least preserve wealth.

    • I don’t think I’ll ever own enough to have a problem storing it at my house. Even if I keep it in the package it is the size of an envelope. Hopefully, it’ll be a problem one day to store my ridiculous gold bars, but very unlikely considering I am just throwing the amount of an inexpensive dinner at the asset class.

      Even if it keeps with inflation, how cool would it be one day to hand my kids just a boat load of actual gold!

  3. I have bought physical gold coins from Apmex via ebay ,quite a few times in past years.We would like to have few coins incase.

    • I went with a company that had free shipping over $100 – I didn’t look too much into pricing but I guess I will in the future

  4. Nice post, Evan. We have NOT bought physical gold or other commodities before.

    I’ve considered certain “alternative” assets, but practically all our net worth is in paper assets.

    Thanks again for sharing.

    • At the amount I am buying it would take YEARS and YEARS of non-growth from my “paper” assets to allow gold to even become a substantial part of my net worth (or, alternatively, a few years of build up of gold and then a substantial crash of the major markets…which could happen!)

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