There is also the security aspect to consider. If people think you have silver, and they may naturally assume that it is at home, you could become a target further down the track.
I had someone ask me about my precious metals at a morning tea in front of everyone. I just denied all knowledge but they knew that i just didn't want to discuss it. People talk so it is best to keep the trap shut.
Dont waste your energy. You can only help those who want to be helped. If you try and push your view upon someone who isnt ready for it they will just push back and act as if they know better. You are better off just asking them what their plans are for building wealth and listen intently. If they tell you buying realestate just say "ok, cool? What do you see happening in the real estate market?" and see what their response is. If they say its going up then simply ask "What do you think will make it go up?" If they say its for cashflow, Ask them what level of gain/cashflow they would ideally expect each year. Then ask them how they are going to get there. Ask them if they want to take on debt...Then ask where they think interest rates are heading, and why. What you will discover by asking simple and intelligent questions is that they will discover that they are not actually that educated in investing. What one persons motivation for investing is might be very different to yours. Someone who says to buy a house might be more interested in having homely comforts and security and arent interested in making money per se...However they cover this by calling it an "investment". What people dont realise is that realestate and sharemarket trading are sophisticated investments that require a high financial IQ and success in the current economic climate is dependent on knowing what/why/when. They will then realise how important these factors are and will probably ask your advice. However, if you have tried to shove your viewpoint down their throat uninvited then good luck to you!
Firstly, you can't help people who aren't seeking help. Not ever! (Take note you socialist-communist-wealth redistributing, statist gentle-folk. Not even "for their own good". Especially then!!) Secondly, telling people you're stacking precious metals at your house (or anywhere) is not a good idea. You never know who will find out . . . 6 degrees of seperation, etc. Thirdly, it is the failure of trust in FIAT currencies that will motivate people into seeking the means of hedging against their collapse and thereby buying precious metals. So, a full-frontal assault on telling people to buy PMs is not smart, whereas hacking at the root of the issue of FIAT currencies will educate and motivate people. For instance, there is actually 10% more paper currency in Australia today than a year ago (M1 & M3 as reported by the RBA). That's a 50% haircut to your share of the monetary pool (purchasing power) in 7 years! That means you have to double your money every seven years just to stay afloat . . . not advance, but just maintain your relative financial position! Housing is already over priced to crazy, unaffordable levels but Banks are winding back their lending and the only way housing is maintaining its price levels now is through foreign investment. Take that away and Australia will no longer be the only first world country not to have experienced a housing correction. So we are at the top of the housing market and there is only one way for it to go from here. Tsk, tsk, tsk . . . whatever is one supposed to do?
We have all been down this path. Eventually these people will wake up, until then don't bother. Try once, "they laugh" then its their problem from now on when SHTF. I wouldn't bother helping them later on. Just remember, we will have the last laugh when it all happens =D. Slam
Following on from my first post (which a few people have given a +1 to) and as several people have said, don't waste your time and your energy. I think a lot of new stackers feel unsure of their foray into precious metals and look to other people to validate their decisions - "Please, please Uncle Bob/Jane Co-worker/John Neighbour, buy some metal so I don't feel all alone with this lump of silver I just bought". We have this niggling doubt that unless everyone we know is doing what we're doing, we're making a mistake. I'll certainly put my hand up to thinking that when I first started ("Oh s***, I just bought thousands of dollars worth of stuff that NOBODY else I know has. I must be an idiot!" You can see that same thing happening with real estate, where everyone talks incessantly about their new house or investment property because on the inside they're thinking "Oh s***, I just spent half a million dollars I don't have on some house. Please tell me I'm not the only one and that it was a good idea!" All I can say is that you get past this stage and regardless of whether you want to talk about your investments or keep them to yourself, you're the one who is ultimately responsible for your decisions so it really doesn't matter whether you convince a friend to keep you company. (Well, it does a bit, so shut up and buy as much as you can while its still cheap).
+1 When I started stacking seriously in the big correction in 2008 I was offering friends the ability to jump in on my orders with the perth mint and share shipping etc. This was before the days of online buying and everything was handled by phone/fax. No-one wanted in! I was buying 1kg bars for $580 or so. When those same mates ask what its worth now I just say if you had invested $1000 back then youd have doubled your money easily. Given the time span and my ongoing committment to this investment class they now are starting to realise that I was on to something and now listen to my advice and actually ask for it. This is the same as when I was guiding an ex girlfriend and her husband in buying their first house when huge first home buyer grants were on offer. I kept saying hold your money and wait, it will come down. I showed them charts, described buyer behaviour, explained why the grants were on offer but they didnt want to listen and instead took advice from their parents who said junk like " get in now, its only going to go up"... Thankfully they got outbid at auctions that were illegally under quoted and never found their house...They now reflect on the advice given by me and their parents and look at what the market is doing...Also, due to their lifestyle they are now broke and living back at home unable to rent their own place...Imagine if they had a mortgage!!! Funnilly I also advised their parents to sell their house back then which in hindsight would have acheived them another $1M on what they are facing today. The said "no no, we will wait because the markets are recovering and the GFC is over. Prices will go up and a spring 2011 campaign is the best". I dont have the heart to say "I told you so" beacuse it only ruins relationships...and for what? to prove you were right? Dont push your point...Just give advice if they want it and let time decide if you were right. If you were right then you have built credibility to give advice in the future...but if you were a dick about it then no one wants to listen anyway.
Have told two mates over dinner a few months before Christmas. They thought I was crazy. Had dinner again last month. They asked about my silver, and I told them how much spot had appreciated and how much more I had bought since we last spoke.... The silence was deafening. Anyway...talk got onto property and shares and inflation etc etc... Wasnt brought up again. I'm not about to force my views on anyone regarding this. I'm happy with the decision I have made. I've not borrowed a penny to preserve a portion of my wealth in this form. If it comes to pass that silver goes ballistic and we're looking at >$100/oz, then so be it. I'll be smiling, but so be it. I mean, lets face it. The great unwashed majority drink the kool-aid and believe whatever is fed to them from the MSM. I only started waking up and few years ago. The internet has been amazing. No wonder various govts want to censor and control it. Silver still is not a mainstream investment. And the majority of those in silver are in paper. The concept of increasing money supply, inflation, loss of spending power and devaluation is not understood by most.
From todays Adelaide Advertiser, adelaide residential property- 200.2% gains, australian shares-54.8%, GOLD- 449% data formed from the last 10 years. Also interesting to note- Gold production appears to have plateaued,world gold production peaked at 2600 tt in 2001 and has hovered in a 10% range below that since.(figures from the US Geological Survey) After 2013 robust investment is projected to support the Gold price. In the last 12 months though Gold has had gains of 32.2% compared to Silver 124%.
Yup, scary stuff ... the Australian money supply, as defined in 'broad money' terms, has doubled in the last 7 years: Dec 2003: $667.4 billion Dec 2010: $1329.4 billion
You gotta throw the ball back in their court. Don't play defensive, go aggressive. Ask them how much their real estate appreciated in the last 10 years? ask a cold hard number! Then tell them how much Gold/Silver appreciated in the last 10 years. You see... the problem with these people who go crazy about real estate and laugh at PM is they HAVEN'T DONE their homework! They "think" their RE investment is the best out there, BASED on here-says and what EVERYONE else is doing... meaning... they're part of the herd. They HAVEN'T DONE the cold hard maths yet. If you slap them with the cold hard numbers and charts they'll go into disbelieve mode, their eyes see what they see but their mind will be in "denial".
First ever time I told someone went something like this: ME: "Hey you know, if you want to look at somewhere great to put your money check out silver" HIM: "haha, yeah, we have an uncle in our family always saying something's going to be the next big thing"
I tell people that, when the boom in RE started in 2001 lets say, that no one was crazy about RE at that stage, but year after year when RE was registering higher and higher prices and people kept buying and buying and it was making more and more sense. I tell them that if they buy silver now, it would be the same as buying houses in 2002 !
Just tell them the worse the economy gets, the more the price of metals increase. Or that it's appreciating more than putting money into a bank account.
"Telling people about investing in precious metals" - This is a very important point. I told many people to invest in precious metals in 2006. Some of them have invested much money. The people who followed my advice to invest in precious metals especially in physical Silver are good friends and relatives. Now, I try to convince investors on the internet to seize the chance of a lifetime. I often recommend to invest in physical Silver by putting links to sites which provide convincing reasons, joining groups such as http://www.facebook.com/?ref=logo#!/group.php?gid=341020955461 (GOLD WILL HIT $5000 an Ounce!!!! - http://www.goldprice.org/index.html) or I'm "liking" informative websites such as www.silver-info.com to show my friends what I like - it's often just one click which can influence many people
i have had issues trying to convince my dad. i don't have enough wealth accumulated (actually a bit in the hole due to a student loan) to worry about myself but he's worked his whole life and i'm worried for him because of his heavy investment in the stock market. he bought 1K worth of physical silver just to shut me up i think. based on seemingly reasonable insight from some of the older-wiser (sounding anyway) folks on here, i didn't tell him to go all in, just put 1/3 into pm and mostly gold at that. he thinks it's too risky yet probably 90% of his life savings is tied to stock in the company he used to work for. it's very frustrating. i guess when your own family won't even take you seriously, you just gotta do what's right for you.
Hobo-jo makes the most important point. The fact is, RE has actually performed very well in the past 10 years......and everyone know somebody who has doubled/tripled their money by hundreds and thousands of $$$$$. Comparing the two investments over the last 10 years is good, but its also easy to get caught out. You have to remember that alot of the people that made huge profits from RE are actually very intelligent (as much as it burns us) and they have a massive portfolio to back their argument. I think the best way to argue against property is with examples of past property bubbles, explaining the long term moving average of house values, and disproving the housing shortage myth. The best way to make a case for gold/silver would really have to involve explaining how money creation, central banks, debt and gold standard works. If someone is head strong about a gold bubble their argument will always be 'all the experts are saying gold is in a bubble.' Unless they understand why gold value is increasing its not even worth wasting your breath. Other then that, you only have time on your side, let events un-roll and dont make too many knee jerk comments about reduced property prices or increased gold/silver prices. Things can always swing back the other way for a quater or two and people love to throw in the good old 'I hate to so I told you so.'
Yes, I was like that too. But as I see the prices of silver rising I decided to keep quite. I'm happy we have this forum to hang out
Property is most often bought with borrowed money. Precious metals with saved money. Therein lies one difference.
