Damned if you do... damned if you don't

Hi

I know i'm not the only one that has this problem, but i recently told some family and friends that i started stacking silver. They actually looked at me like i'm an idiot lol.
I literally had to justify why i would do such a thing. Forget the fact that i am trying to invest in something and not just piss my money up the wall.

What the experience made me realise is just how many people think shares or real estate is still a good thing to invest in and how much precious metals are shunned by the general public.

LOL @ the blank looks i got when i told them the government is devaluing the currency. The blank looks then turned to mockery like i am a conspiracy theorist, well i am lol but i don't think the want or need to stack "silver" is a conspiracy theory.

I know this might seem spiteful, but i have come to the conclusion that i won't tell anyone around me that i'm stacking silver anymore.

 

Show them a 10 year chart that will do the trick

 

You don't need others to validate your beliefs,Mark.I get the same reaction/apathy from my family and friends.
Look at it this way.Use their response /reaction to your beliefs as a "litmus test" for the whole world in relation to PM's .I know that ,once the skeptics and naysayers are coming up to me and asking for advice on PM's ,that will be a sure sign of Phase 3 beginning.
Knowledge is POWER!

 

Lol, I have been down this path. Not too your extent.

I think your thinking in the right direction, give it 2 years. They will come to you by then.

I was reading on Whirlpool just then, in a thread where it talks about Aussies being up to their eyeballs in debt. Some person prefers to put their money in cash term deposit. He believes that shares are doing no good and property is flat.

Its amazing that its the only things they know about when investing. Everything else is not an investment asset.

I believe people only associate gold/silver in the form of Jewelery and this is why they think your crazy. Give them a 1kg brick to hold for 10 seconds. Then take it off them. Tell them you can liquidate this bar within 1 hour or less easily and get a fair market price. Doesn't sound too crazy does it? =D

Slam

 

We all go through this Mark. Most folks look at the world around them the way they're indoctrinated to. They forget they are born of free thinking philosiphy and instead seek the relative safety of staying amongst the herd.

Many stackers come to being from something which interrupts this status quo and forces them to take stock of their position. Almost like minds that have been freed of the Matrix, so to is how we perceive the world around us.

But regardless of the fact you can show people the door, most - and I really mean MOST - will choose to remain part of the status quo and seek comfort and happyness in what they know.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7BuQFUhsRM

Just remember mate, when confronted with the choice, MOST people will take the blue pill.

I'm pretty much done trying educate anyone outside of my immediate family. The amount of grief you cop from those who don't want to face the reality of the world around them simply makes it not worth it.

These people are on a one way ticket to Ponzi hell for the most part, in the grip of debt leveraged fantasies of easy pickings and whilst some will make it, for the majority, they will fall on their own swords and never really understand why.



The world is one massive debt based casino gulag economy mate, where people rush to put the chain around their ankle as soon as possible, thinking they can all beat the system. Just to give the suckers hope, the system allows a few to win and just like a casino, they take the rest to the cleaners.

But getting people to actually wake up to this system is very, very difficult. For close family members I can understand the desire to help, but sometimes, it's simply not worth it.

 

We have all been there, and know very well the blank looks that you are describing.

I tell them, those who advocated buying houses in 2000 were laughed at as well.

Thats why silver is such a good investment, less than 2% of people are aware of what it actually is, and when the
rest catches on, they will push the price higher, - - same thing happened with real estate.

 

As Auspm said, we all go through this. It's kind of understandable. People have a deep seated fear of losing their hard earned money, and there are heaps of horror stories around about this or that crashing. Silver stacking is like any investment. We don't just take a punt and hope for the best - we try to educate ourselves as best we can on stacking and commit for the long haul. We have to expect people at large to react the same way we would have before we realised what we know now.

 

hahaha we are all in the same situation.
You are just too far ahead for them.
Eventually they will catch up.. probably when its too late.

The other day I showed a relative a 1kg coin.
I said a year ago I bought it for XXX amount then a year later I sold it for XXX amount.
Can you get this amount from just putting this amount in the bank?
....Then they get it.

Then I get the next question was..... if I buy who am I going to sell it to later on? lol

 

In the late 90s we were buying rental properties in country victoria. These properties were advertised in the papers - it wasn't some secret or anything. We were getting just over 20% rental returns on them. They were paying for themselves entirely (mortgage, rates, rental agent fees, the whole lot) and leaving us between $8 and $20 per week cash in our pockets for each house we bought. The rental demand was so great for them we couldn't buy them fast enough. For a while I tried to explain what we were doing to different people - none of them could see that we were buying assets with very little of our own money (usually none!!) and someone else was paying them off entirely. At the end of 12 years we would own the house outright and would not have put 1 cent of our own in - in fact we were taking money out!! Every single person we told (even the real estate agents that were selling them too us!!) could only say "Why would you want to own a property in XXXXX - you should be buying in Melbourne where you can lose money and claim it on your tax return"

I went to a party where I was introduced as the "Crazy guy who buys property out in the sticks". Mind you the place is only just over an hour from melbourne!

Several years later - after the prices had skyrocketed and you now get rental returns of 5% - the same people (including the real estate agents) started coming to me saying that they had started buying property in the same town and wasn't it a great investment. I don't tell them that they are buying the properties that we are selling - the ones they told us we were nuts to buy and get a 20% return on.

Run the numbers - look at the investment for yourself. If it makes sense - do it but always keep your eyes on the door.

malachii

 

Keep on stacking and disregard the scared sheeple.

 

All too common. Relative newbie to stacking: 1kg bars and kooks at the moment. When talk gets round to investing, the usual suspects are bandied about: shares, property, managed funds. No one, repeat, no one talks about PM. No one. Having brought it up with one group of colleagues (all Melb based health professionals) I won't do it again. The looks I got were amazing. 'oh, and you don't believe in global warming, either, right?' or 'and Sept 11 was some conspiracy?'
Stackers, IMO are lumped in with the tin foil hat brigade. I've been through shares and property and done well out of both (not as good as Malachii, obviously) but PM (esp Ag) just seems so fundamentally right. On so many levels.
I've given up trying to educate or discuss PM with others. I'm not in it for a quick buck. I'm long Ag, with a view to transferring to Au when the GSR gets even more attractive. I'm also in debt, both personal and business. But the investment I'm most excited about is PM.
When people start bringing PM up in conversation or in the MSM, that's Phase 3, and look out....

 

Hi Mark,

I guess when we know something we like to share it and help people. I'm afraid when it comes to investing topics MYTHS prevail with the masses. People have been so indoctrinated with the real estate story, and not being educated investors they cannot see what is unfolding before them. Why is there inflation? Most have no opinion on that question because most likely they haven't thought about it. Zimbabwe should be enough to highlight the predicament we are in. Getting over the "How much is it?" paradigm - products and typical shopping etc, and moving to the "It's a store of wealth" paradigm seems to me important. Most won't get this until it's too late.

I wouldn't be telling too many you know about your stack as a risk measure to avoid home invasions etc.

I don't tell anyone about silver because I see they will find out eventually. If I tell them and I am wrong I wouldn't want them to blame me. I'm happy to talk to like minded people such as us on this forum.

With regard to conspiracy theory, you could fire back and ask them why they believe in coincidence theories. Do they think the world situation is a coincidence? If we suffer from biases such as normalcy bias - nothing changes - and survivorship bias - as with those holding on to high value property believing it will always be high yet we don't know - then other stories will seem to be weird to them.

What are you mainly stacking? Coins / bars?

Cheers...

 

Stackers running around excitedly talking about "phase three" doesn't exactly do much to dispel the notion that they're freaks, does it?

Think about how ridiculous "phase three" sounds to the average person.

 

Watch Peter Schiff talk about property and anyone can see how crazy property has been thought about.

1. "Why the Meltdown Should Have Surprised No One"

2. "Peter Schiff Mortgage Bankers Speech" (2006)

Both are over an hour long but very good viewing.

Cheers

 

GP: It's so true, isn't it? I'm amazed at some of the looks and comments I receive when talking about Ag/Au. Not meaning to offend and financial planners/advisers in this forum, but I think it would be a pretty easy job to do....
Diversify: Invest in shares, property, cash. Oh, and here is my bill for x% trailing commission... Can I drive my BMW now?
As for me, I'm talking about it less, nodding sagely and adjusting my tin foil hat as the world cools...

 

Most of my friends are a mix of gen y and gen x, when we discuss investments etc I am silent, not once has PM come up in discussion.

I occasionally throw the old oh golds 1400 atm comment.

Very few people know that I stack, this is more of a personal security thing than anything, I am not keen to discuss my investments in PM with close friends as quite frankly I don't trust people.

I only discuss stacking with family but they seem to get it as they are long term stackers themselves.

 

Silverfunk, it sounds like your in the same boat as me, although the majority of my friends are gen Y though (as am i). i once tried to discuss my thoughts on investing, i think that was the first and last time i tried to go in depth with my thoughts on the PM's world economy etc. It makes me cringe literally when i listen to my workmates talk about how there buying 400k homes purely for capital gains and them getting congratulated for buying an sound investment.

Finances appears to be one of those taboo subjects in modern society. which i have spoken in short to my parents, and very short to my in-laws. my fiance and i generally keep what we do "under Wraps" so to speak. how pleasant a thought of going into work and discussing the PM's markets with open constructive banter, but unfortunately i think this time is a while away yet. and i honestly think that will be my cue to sell.

"Mitch"

 

There's still plenty of rentier capitalists on this forum as well and many of them up to their eyeballs in debt and trust me, they don't like being called out on it.

There are also a lot of ex-IP investors here as well who made a killing in IPs and are now putting that cash into metal.

Just remember this forum is like any other investor forum. Not property bias per-say, but a LOT of property investors (current and past) frequent these forums.