Gold, Guns, and other Hard Assets – How, Why, and How Much
March 24, 2021
By Matt Miner, MBA, CFP®
In the last year I fielded frequent questions about investing in hard assets – things you can touch. Most of these questions related to investing in gold as an inflation hedge.
What are hard assets? This post lists examples, including:
Real estate
Gold, Silver, Platinum & other precious metals
Oil, Natural gas & other resources
Equipment and machinery
Vehicles / Classic cars
Commodities
Paintings
Collectibles
Today’s show focuses on gold and other super-basic assets like batteries, food, water, full tanks of gasoline, firewood, and firearms.
I also explain what my family and I aren’t doing doing to prep for the Zombie apocalypse.
Gold Mining and Gold as an Investment
The biggest alternative investing topic I’ve been asked about in the last twelve months is investing in gold. I’ve got a personal connection to gold. My dad, Bob Miner, was a fan of western mining history which meant the Comstock Lode in Virginia City Nevada, and the California Mother Lode in California’s placer gold country.
I grew up with family vacations including panning and sluicing for gold in the cold mountain streams of the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. I recall one outing with a brand-new 1992 Plymouth Voyager minivan that involved taking that car down a jeep trail following our guide’s Ford Bronco II to his claim near Grass Valley as tree branches raked the sides of the car, much to my dad’s dismay. From that trip I own an eighth ounce of color obtained by scraping bedrock for soil and washing paydirt in a nearby stream. A placer mining vacation might be just what the doctor ordered in 2021.
Moving beyond mining the stuff for yourself, here are my thoughts on gold the asset.
Gold began 2020 priced around $1600 per ounce and ended the year around $1900 per ounce, after peaking just over $2000 per ounce in summer 2020. This 13% increase in the value of the metal can be compared to an 18% return for the S&P 500, a 20% return for the Russell 2000, and a 230% increase in the price of Bitcoin in 2020. What shall we make of this? What should ordinary investors do about gold?
Owning Gold
Metal can be owned as a speculative asset, a store of value, and a hedge. It’s not an investment. When it comes to owning metal, it's important to keep these distinctions in mind.
I contrast:
1. An investment
2. A speculative asset
3. A store of value, and
4. A hedge
Buying metal is not investing. When you buy an investment, you expect it to increase your wealth as you capture a share of the profit created when the business delivers a good or service to its customers. Or, in the case of a bond or real estate, you expect to receive a stream of income payments. A metal does neither of these things. Instead, owning metal has costs like storage, transportation, and security. This is one reason for the oft-heard advice to buy mining stocks or mining industry mutual funds to get exposure to metal while also participating as these firms deliver real economic value (an investment), while avoiding the issues of storage, transportation and security.
Buying metal is one way to speculate, betting the price will increase. This is not necessarily bad, it's just important to call it what it is. Speculation is not investment. It’s a bet on price. The people who bought gold at 2000 an ounce in July 2020 bet the price would continue to go up. It didn’t.
Metal should provide a store of value in an inflationary period, which is a hedge against inflation.
What’s a hedge exactly? A hedge seeks to reduce the risk that movements in the value of an asset hurt you.
A hedge has costs because it is expected to move in the opposite direction of some other asset when a bad event occurs.
For example, auto insurance is a hedge. Most of the time you just pay your insurance premium and nothing happens, except you get poorer. But if your car is totaled by an uninsured driver or by your own mistake, your car asset depreciates and your hedge saves the day. In another instance, if your local currency depreciates, perhaps due to inflation, your gold may retain its value. You may be able to transport your metal from the US to Scotland and sell it there. With the proceeds you can pay your first and last month’s rent and security deposit on an apartment. You can buy some groceries.
Paper Assets and Physical Assets
A paper asset is a claim on something. It’s one step removed from the thing itself. A share of stock is a claim on the future value of a business. By contrast, a physical asset is something you can touch, like your house or the chickens in your yard.
It may make sense to own the physical metal if your goal is to hedge some doomsday scenario, like having to flee the US for Scotland. Paper assets could become illiquid in a worst-case scenario, or the underlying firms backing the paper could go out of business. I don’t expect either of these outcomes. I’m just pointing out that if metal is being used as a doomsday hedge, you’ve gotta think this plan all the way through.
Unusual Assets - Target 5% or Less of Portfolio
I recommend that unusual assets occupy less than 10% of your total investment portfolio. 5% is the better target. What do I mean by unusual assets?
Individual stocks and bonds – they’re unusual because you’re taking uncompensated risk by being un-diversified
Angel, Venture capital, private equity, or hedge fund investments, unless this is your main business
Tractors and equipment, unless you’re a farmer or construction firm owner
Hard-money or crowd-sourced loans
Cryptocurrency
Gold, silver, or other metals
Collectibles
Vacant land
Commodities, like grain, oil, or copper, again unless you’re a farmer, an oil producer, or a copper miner
Ordinary Assets - Target 95% or more of Portfolio
In some ways it would be easier to list what isn’t an unusual asset. Let’s call these Ordinary Assets that Make up the Bulk of your Net Worth. These are:
Broadly diversified, low-cost mutual funds and ETFs
Carefully selected, low-leverage income real estate – residential or commercial
Investments in private business you control or where you have significant influence, like a board seat or C-level job
Single stocks of public companies where you serve on the board of directors of the company or are a senior manager – the more senior the better!
Everything else is probably an unusual asset.
Adding Gold to your Portfolio - Where?
Full disclosure: Other than the 1/8th ounce I mined from the Mother Lode in 1992, I don’t own any gold.
Taking Delivery versus Paid Storage
There are a number of companies that store your physical metal in their safe, secure storage facilities. For this, they charge a fee. In general, I don’t recommend this approach. If you want to own gold, I recommend it represent a very small part of your net worth, and that you consider taking physical delivery.
Here’s why: If you’re buying gold to hedge against a theoretical worst-case scenario, the same macro-problems (political unrest, economic catastrophe) hurting miners and stock exchanges may plague the storage companies offering metal storage to clients. If you want to keep a couple percent of your net worth in physical metal, I recommend you keep it nearby, probably in gold coins that travel easily!
Imaginary Case Study
Carla has investable assets of $1.2M, not including her main home. She’s concerned about political upheaval and reckons she’d like to keep 5% of her investable assets in physical gold in case she needs to flee Chile for Mexico. Once Carla gets to Mexico, she plans to buy a few acres of land and a truck. She will launch her vegetable farm and produce distribution company, and her YouTube Channel, From Chile with Charm, offering a course about how wealthy Chilean women can flee Chile for Mexico to begin new careers in agriculture.
To put her plan into action, Carla needs to buy $60,000 of physical gold. At the current price of about $1735 per ounce, this is 35 ounces of gold. Carla can procure 35 one-ounce gold coins and tuck these away in a bank safe deposit box, or in diverse, secure locations in case she needs to head north in a hurry. Thirty-five ounces of gold is not a lot of volume.
You may think that owning $60,000 in physical gold is crazy. I’m not suggesting it’s necessary for you, but I believe $60,000 in gold has greater enduring value than a $60,000 car, and no one suggests someone with $1.2M in investable assets shouldn’t own a $60,000 auto (though most don’t). Gold can travel across borders with greater ease than the Benz.
Owning Gold in an IRA: Please Don’t Do It!
I do not recommend owning metal in an IRA. Based on the average income of folks reading this blog, you won't be able to claim a tax deduction for funding a traditional IRA, and I also recommend against owing gold in a backdoor Roth IRA. Here’s why:
Even in a self-directed Roth IRA there are regulations about owning metals
These accounts often have high account fees - $100 to $200 per year or more
A Roth IRA is intended to shelter investment appreciation from future tax. With gold, you don't expect dividends, interest, or appreciation, so you sacrifice the value of this type of account.
I wrote a poem on this topic, with sincere apologies to Dr Seuss.
Owning Gold in an IRA
by Matt Miner
I do not like it, if pre-tax.
I do not like it, to the max.
In a Roth gold fails the test,
Gold IRAs are not the best.
If you want to own a few thousand dollars of physical metal, maybe $5000 to $50,000, buy it with after tax money, take physical delivery, and keep it in a secure location in your home, or in a bank safe deposit box. If your goal is to speculate on price rather than protect against doomsday scenarios, acquiring the metal via a storage service and paying storage fees, or betting on mining stocks with after-tax dollars can be another approach.
Just keep this part of your wealth to a low fraction - 5% or less - of your overall net worth.
Other Hard Assets - Go Basic
What about hard assets other than gold? I start with the ones I think are most useful and work my way down the list. None of these will break the bank as a fraction of your net worth, but they might come in very handy in certain scenarios.
Make sure you have a way to charge your cell phone if the power goes out. There are many ways to accomplish this including backup batteries, generators, and using your car.
On that note, keep your cars relatively full of gasoline so if you have to go somewhere else – ahead of a hurricane, for example, petroleum is not the problem.
Maintain some currency on hand. Depending on where you are in your financial journey, a reasonable amount could be anywhere from $500 to $50,000. The correct order of magnitude for this asset is 1/5th of 1% to 1% of your net worth. Keep most of it in small bills – 20s, 10s, and 5s so you can pay people for goods and services if they can’t make change and can’t process electronic payments because the power’s out.
Keep a couple cases of bottled water and a few days of non-perishable food at your place.
If you have the capability to heat with wood, keep some dry firewood handy in case you lose access to energy in the winter.
What about the ever-famous guns and ammunition? Here in the Miner family, we’re big fans of all the amendments, including the second, but let’s be real: I’m a lover, not a fighter. Any guns I have are for hunting and personal enjoyment. The likelihood that I successfully defend my home against a Zombie apocalypse or invasion by a hostile nation a-la the Red Dawn movie, is nil.
Charity and I agree: We’re just not geared to survive the first wave of the catastrophe, and that’s OK.
The Five Effs
Fone
Fuel
Funds
Food
Firewood, with Firearms thrown in for fun.
The only thing I’d add to my current supplies – not yet purchased – is a whole-house generator powered by natural gas.
On a slightly larger scale, owning your home for cash – skipping the monthly mortgage payment –creates the equivalent of a stream of cash flows that’s not correlated with market investments or with your business.
Beyond that, what we learned through the Covid quarantine, was the importance of setting up your life the way you want it – we live in a place we love, with people we love, with enough space around us, and enough basic supplies and equipment to do what we want, at least for a while, without the need to resupply. That’s a sweet place to be, and I recommend it to anybody.
Key Takeaways
When it comes to gold as an asset, remember:
It’s not an investment.
It is a speculative asset, a potential store of value, and a hedge, at least some of the time
We’ve discussed the difference between paper assets, which represent a claim on something else, like a stock or bond, and physical assets like gold, houses, and blue jeans.
Now you know about taking delivery versus having someone else store an asset for you, and when that distinction might matter.
And, I’ve shared my doggerel-thoughts on where to own your gold – NOT in an IRA!
Finally, set up your living situation the way you want, to be comfortable for you and your family, and then fill your home with basic things that can be used to address disaster planning for events like storms, earthquakes, loss of power, and floods.
TRANSCRIPT
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[00:00:01] Matt Miner: Over the course of the last year or so, I have fielded frequent questions about investing in hard assets, things you can touch. Most of these questions are related to investing in gold as an inflation hedge. Now, a prominent blog post on this topic lists examples of hard assets include real estate, gold, silver, platinum, and other precious metals, oil, natural gas, and other resources, equipment and machinery, vehicles and classic cars, commodities, paintings, and collectibles.
I'm not qualified to comment on many of these asset classes, but the first half of today's show focuses on gold. After that, we're going to get super basic with our assets and talk about batteries, food, water, full tanks of gasoline, firewood, and firearms. Be sure to stick around to the end for what the Miner family is not doing to prep for the zombie apocalypse.
[music]
Hey, and welcome to the Work Pants Finance podcast. I'm Matt Miner, your money guide, and Work Pants Finance is the show for MBAs, entrepreneurs, and other professionals who want their financial plan to work as hard as they do. Today's show is called Gold, Guns and Other Hard Assets. How, why, and how much. You can read more at workpantsfinance.com/11.
[music]
The biggest alternative investing topic I've been asked about in the last 12 months is investing in gold, followed by Bitcoin. I'm not ready to tackle Bitcoin in a podcast yet, but I've got my thoughts all lined up on how the squishy yellow metal and other more basic hard assets might fit into your investing plan.
I've got a personal connection to gold. My dad, Bob Miner, was a fan of Western mining history, which meant the Comstock Lode in Virginia City, Nevada, and the California Mother Lode in California as Placer Gold Country.
I grew up with family vacations occasionally including panning and sluicing for gold in the cold mountain streams at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. I recall one family vacation with a brand new 1992 Plymouth Voyager minivan, that involve taking that car down a jeep trail, following our guides, Ford Bronco, to his claim near Grass Valley, California. From that trip, I still own an eighth ounce of color obtained by scraping bedrock for soil and washing pay dirt in a nearby stream. Who knows? A Placer mining vacation might be just what you and your family need in 2021.
Moving beyond mining the gold for yourself, here are my thoughts on gold as an asset. Gold began 2020 priced around $1,600 per ounce and end of the year at about $1,900 per ounce after peaking just over $2,000 in the summer. This 13% increase in the value of the metal can be compared to an 18% return for the S&P 500, a 20% return for the Russell 2000, and a 230% increase in the price of bitcoin. What should we make of this? What should ordinary investors do about gold? I'm glad you asked.
Metals can be owned as a speculative asset, a store of value, and as a hedge. Metals are not an investment. When it comes to owning metal, it's important to keep these distinctions in mind.
Today, I contrast an investment, a speculative asset, a store of value, and a hedge. Then I contrast a paper asset with a physical at one. Finally, I discuss taking delivery versus having someone else store your metal. Finally, I discuss which type of account to own your gold in.
First, investing, speculation, store of value and hedge. Buying metal is not investing. When you buy an investment, you expect it to increase your wealth as you capture a share of the profit created when the business delivers a good or service to its customers, or in the case of a bond or real estate, you expect to receive a stream of income payments.
A metal does neither of these things. Instead, owning a metal has costs, like storage, transportation, and security. This is one reason for the oft-heard advice to buy mining stocks or mining industry mutual funds in order to get exposure to metal, while also participating as these firms deliver real economic value to their customers makes them an investment.
You also as an investor avoid issues like storage, transportation, and security. Beyond investing, buying metal is one way to speculate, betting the price will rise. This is not necessarily bad. It's just important to call it what it is. Speculation is not investment. It's a bet on price. People who bought gold at $2,000 an ounce in July 2020 bet the price would continue to go up. It didn't. Metal should provide a store of value in an inflationary period, which is a hedge against inflation.
What's a hedge exactly? A hedge seeks to reduce the risk that movements in the value of an asset hurt you. A hedge has costs because it is expected to move in the opposite direction of some other asset when a bad event occurs.
For example, auto insurance is a hedge. Most of the time, you just pay your auto insurance premium and nothing happens, except that you get poorer by the amount of the premium. If your car is totaled by an uninsured driver, or because of your own mistake, your car asset depreciates and your hedge saves the day.
In another instance, if your local currency depreciates perhaps due to inflation, your gold may retain its value. You may be able to transport your metal from the US to Scotland and sell it there. With the proceeds, you can pay your first and last month's rent and security deposit on an apartment. You can buy some groceries.
Second, paper assets and physical assets. A paper asset is a claim on something. It's one step removed, or can be several steps removed from the thing itself. A share of stock is a claim on the future value of a business. By contrast, a physical asset is something you can touch, like your house, or the chickens in your yard.
The second half of today's show focuses on basic physical assets I recommend you pay attention to. To own metal as a speculation, a store of value, and a hedge, it may make sense to own the physical metal, especially if you own the metal because you're hedging some doomsday scenario, like having to flee the US or Scotland.
Paper assets could become illiquid in some worst-case scenario, or the underlying firms backing the paper could go out of business. What about taking delivery versus having someone else store your metal? Before we can answer this question wisely, I want to share my thoughts on the place, specifically the percentages that unusual assets should occupy in your overall invested assets portfolio.
I recommend that unusual assets occupy less than 10% of your total investment portfolio, 5% is the better target. What do I mean by unusual assets? Well, individual stocks and bonds are unusual because you are taking uncompensated risk by being undiversified. Angel, venture capital, private equity, and hedge fund investments, unless these are your main business, are also unusual assets.
Tractors and equipment, unless you're a farmer or a construction firm owner, are unusual assets. Hard money, or crowdsource loans, cryptocurrency, gold, silver, and other metals like we've been talking about, collectibles, vacant land, and commodities like grain, oil, and copper. Again, unless you're a farmer, an oil producer, or a copper miner, are all unusual assets by this definition.
In some ways, it would be easier to list what isn't an unusual asset. Let's call these ordinary assets that make up the bulk of your net worth. These are broadly diversified low-cost mutual funds and ETFs. Carefully selected, low leverage income real estate, whether residential or commercial. Investments in private business you control or where you have significant influence, such as a board seat or a C-level job. Single stocks of public companies where you serve on the board of directors of the company, or are a senior manager, and the more senior you are, the better. Everything else is an unusual asset.
Now that we've classified gold as an unusual asset, let me share my recommendation on how I'd add it to my portfolio, and full disclosure, other than that eighth of an ounce that I mined for motherlode in 1992, I don't own any gold.
When it comes to adding gold to your portfolio, one of the things to consider is taking delivery versus having someone else store your metal. There are a number of companies that purport to store your physical metal in their safe, secure storage locations. For this, they charge you a fee. Presumably, there is some way for you to travel to these facilities or to hire someone to travel for you to see your gold or to take physical delivery there.
I haven't actually looked into it. In general, I don't recommend this approach. If you want to own gold, I recommend it represent a very small part of your net worth as we've already been talking about, and that you consider taking physical delivery. Here's why. If you're buying gold to hedge against a theoretical worst-case scenario, the same macro problems, political unrest, economic catastrophe, hurting miners and stock exchanges may plague the storage companies offering metal storage to clients. If you want to keep a couple of percent of your net worth in physical metal, I recommend you keep it nearby, probably in gold coins that travel easily.
Here's a case study. Carla has investable assets of $1.2 million, not including her main home. She's concerned about political upheaval, and reckons she'd like to keep 5% of her investable assets in physical gold in case she needs to flee Chile from Mexico.
Once Carla gets to Mexico, she plans to buy a few acres of irrigated land and a truck. She will launch her vegetable farm and a produce distribution company, plus her YouTube channel, From Chile with Charm, offering a course about how wealthy Chilean women can flee Chile from Mexico to be in new careers in agriculture.
To put her plan into action, Carla needs to buy $60,000 of physical gold. At the current price of about $1,735 per ounce, this is 35 ounces of gold. Carla can procure 35 one ounce gold coins and tuck these away in a bank safe deposit box, or in diverse, secure locations in case she needs to head north in a hurry. 35 ounces of gold is not a lot of volume. It would not come close to filling a single Nalgene bottle, although the bottle would clank pretty good.
You may think that owning $60,000 in physical gold is crazy. I'm not suggesting it's necessary for you, but I assert that $60,000 in gold has greater enduring value than a $60,000 car. No one suggests that someone with $1.2 million in investible assets shouldn't own a $60,000 auto, although most don't. Gold can travel across borders with greater ease than the Benz.
Fourth. What about owning gold in an IRA? I do not recommend owning metal in an IRA. Based on the average income of my listeners, you will not be able to claim a tax deduction for funding a traditional IRA. I also recommend against a backdoor Roth IRA with metal because, first, even in a self-directed Roth IRA, there are specific regulations and restrictions related to owning metals. Second, these accounts offer high account fees, often $100 to $200 per year or more.
Third, a Roth IRA is intended to shelter investment appreciation from future tax. With gold, you do not expect or receive dividends, interest or appreciation, so you sacrifice the value of this type of account. I wrote you a poem to help you remember. Here is Owning Gold in an IRA by Matt Miner, with sincere apologies to Dr. Seuss. I do not like it if pre-tax. I do not like it to the max. In a Roth, gold fails the test.
Gold IRAs are not the best. There you have it. If you want to own a few thousand dollars of physical metal, maybe $5,000 to $50,000, buy it with after-tax money, take physical delivery, and keep the metal in a secure location in your home, or in a bank safe deposit box.
If you wish to speculate on price rather than protect against doomsday scenarios, acquiring the metal via a storage service and paying storage fees works out okay, or betting on mining stocks with after-tax dollars can be another approach. Just remember to keep this part of your wealth to a low fraction of your overall net worth.
[music]
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What about hard assets other than gold? I begin with the ones that I think are most useful, and work my way down the list. None of these here will break the bank. They are all a small fraction of your net worth, but they might come in very handy in certain scenarios.
First, make sure you have a way to charge your cell phone if the power goes out. There are many ways to accomplish this, and bright folks like you can make an appropriate plan, but they include external power supplies and the ability to connect your phone to your car. To that end, keep your cars relatively full of gasoline. If you have to go somewhere else ahead of a hurricane, for example, petroleum is not a problem.
I recommend you maintain some currency on hand. Depending on where you are in your financial journey, a reasonable amount could be anywhere from $500 to $50,000. The correct order of magnitude here is 1/5 of 1% to 1% of your net worth. Keep most of this in small bills, 20s, 10s, and 5s, so you can pay people for goods and services if they can't make change or can't process electronic payments because the power's out.
You should keep a couple of cases of bottled water and a few days of non-perishable food around your place. If you have the capability to heat with wood, it's great to keep some dry firewood handy.
What about the ever-famous guns and ammunition, which, of course, I put in the title of the show to see if I can rouse some people up. Here, the Miner family, we're big fans of all the amendments, including the second, but let's be real: I'm a lover, not a fighter. Any guns I have are for hunting and personal enjoyment. The likelihood that I successfully defend my home against a zombie apocalypse, or invasion by a hostile nation, like in the Red Dawn movie is virtually nil. Charity and I agree we are just not geared to survive past the first wave of the catastrophe, and that's okay.
While I have no plans to be victimized by a lone intruder, the probability that I survived to fire 10,000 rounds of two to three ammunition is zero. Therefore, I don't plan at that level. I keep my guns and ammo stocked at the level that I can enjoy my sport, without being dependent on the vagaries of shooting supplies at the local sporting goods store.
There's the five F's of preparedness: Phone, fuel, funds, food and firewood, with firearms thrown in for fun.
The only thing I'd add to my current supplies, not yet purchased, is a whole house generator powered by natural gas or propane. On a slightly larger scale, owning your home for cash, skipping that monthly mortgage payment, creates a stream of cash flows that's not correlated with market investments or with your business. This is another good hedge.
Beyond that, what our family learned through the COVID quarantine was the importance of setting up your life the way you want it. We live in a place we love, with people we love, with enough space around us, and enough basic supplies and equipment to do what we want, at least for a while, without having to go to the store. That's a sweet place to be, and I recommend it to anybody.
[music]
Takeaways from today's show really are the show, and I don't want to bore you by repeating myself. When it comes to gold as an asset, remember, it's not an investment. Gold is a speculative asset, and potentially a store of value and a hedge. We've discussed the difference between paper assets, which represent a claim on something else, like a stock or a bond, and physical assets like gold, houses and blue jeans.
Now you know about taking delivery versus having someone else store an asset for you and when that might matter. I've shared my doggerel thoughts on where to own your gold, not in an IRA. Finally, set up your living situation the way you want to be comfortable for you and your family, and then fill your home with basic things that can be used to address disaster planning for events like storms, earthquakes, loss of power and floods.
There are many fringier podcasts and websites than mine that can help you take your prepping to the next level. This show is about the preparation that everyone can and probably should do. Thank you so much for sharing your time with me today.
Please join me for Flashback Friday with Nick Palmisciano and Albert Chou of Diesel Jack Media are back on the show to discuss marketing that doesn't suck. Until then, this is Matt Miner, encouraging you to plan to fund the life you love.
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[00:16:58] Female Speaker: Matt Miner is a fee-only fiduciary financial advisor and founder and CEO of Miner Wealth Management, a North Carolina registered investment advisor, where Matt provides personalized, unconflicted advice to clients for a fee. He's also my dad, so please be nice when you talk to him. Matt is a certified financial planner professional and holds a Series 65 securities license.
He earned his bachelor's degree in finance from Arizona State University and his MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Work Pants Finance is Matt's financial media business, where he talks about work, entrepreneurship, kids, and money, taxes, investing in other personal finance topics. Workpantsfinance.com exists to share wisdom and provide general financial information. It does not financial tax or legal advice. You are an individual and probably need personal advice for your specific situation. You should consider building relationships with helpful, caring, and competent professionals who understand your unique context and can provide advice that is tailored to your needs.
[00:17:54] [END OF AUDIO]