It's taken me awhile to get where I am at currently, not everyone can do things the way I am doing them. All I can do is express what I am doing and try to help others do the same.
I have a few rules I try really hard to live by, I feel it's my responsibility as a refiner and an American to conduct myself in a certain way.
First, as often as I can, I trade refined gold or silver or other precious metals, for material to refine. In doing so, I am helping people who scrap and recycle for a living increase their own stability. The more precious metals they retain, the more money they make off their hard work and labor. I am not just paying for goods, I am trading an investment for goods.
I try to only sell to people who are either hoarding or creating something useful, and doing so here in the United States. When
e-waste is sold to China or India, we are really giving away our precious metals as a country, as a society. And when we do so for pennies on the dollar, it seems like incredible stupidity to me.
I retain as much precious metals as is possible, and only sell specific amounts when my margin is more than a specific percentage. In doing so I am buffering against the dollar loosing value while my investment is in USD form.
I only exchange as much precious metals for USD as I need, at any given time my business bank account only barely has enough funds to pay my current bills, no more than that. This also helps on taxes. Because precious metals are considered a commodity, and because I turn precious metals into useful products, I am not paying any capital gains until they are actually sold, and in keeping what I have in the bank at only what I need I save a lot of money this way.
If you are a scrapper who sells material to refiners, ask them to pay you in precious metals instead of cash, unless you need the cash to pay your bills. It lowers what the government considers income, but it increases your net worth. Gold has always gone up in value, even when it goes down, it goes back up. For example, if I were to have kept a $20 dollar gold piece in 1933, today, just in the weigh of gold it would be worth right around $1500 dollars. That seems like a no brainer to me. The money you invest in precious metals today will do nothing but increase in value.
I wouldn't keep gold bearing material laying around, I would exchange it for precious metals in shot form, not bar form. The reason being is that you can always easily trade bits of gold, but it's more difficult to trade gold coins or bars worth thousands of dollars. You can also split the pieces of gold up between several different hiding places or locations. If you are a prepper you will understand my meaning.
I will never understand in my wildest imagination how anyone could possibly think that paper money is worth more than gold, or why anyone would want to keep paper money instead of gold. For me, it's a no brainer. Gold that I keep on hand is worth far more than paper or electronic funds kept in a bank. It's real, it has far more uses than paper money or electronic funds, it can be easily exchanged, everyone all over the world recognizes it for it's value, and the argument goes on and on.
Retain as much of the beautiful stuff as you can, and play your gold the same way our government does, leverage against it for paper money when required to do so, but keep control of as much of it as possible.
Scott
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