Category Archives: Savings

Using Real Money

In 2024, gold went up over 20% in U.S Federal Reserve Notes (what we call the U.S. Dollar). The proper way to view it is that the U.S. Federal Reserve Notes lost significant value that year. Even though the government said that inflation was only about 3%, it didn’t even come close to what we experienced in the loss of buying power for things like gold and silver. It is clear that if everyone had saved their money in gold, they would all be much wealthier now, and this was only one year. Almost every year, inflation takes a large percentage of the value of our savings.

Gold and silver coins were intended to be the money of the United States. It is still possible to use gold and silver as money in modern life. This means that there is still a way to stop inflation. In this article I explain the problem and propose one good solution. I’m going to explain how you can get your own gold and silver account with the UPMA and why it makes sense. I’ll also show you how you can use gold and silver to buy things today.

It’s important to understand that what I’m describing isn’t just a way to invest in gold and silver. It’s a way to start saving and using it for everyday purchases and to make investments using gold and silver as money. This is what I believe will help to bring healing back to our broken monetary system.

There are many important reasons for getting out of the paper currency system:

  • The paper dollar loses value by government policy which destroys savings
  • Giving a group of people the ability to print money at will, encourages corruption
  • The Constitution of the United States says we are supposed to be using gold and silver
  • Using gold and silver as money makes it much harder to deny access to your money
  • Using physical gold and silver is more private because no one else has to know about your transactions.
  • You could be earning inflation protected interest by leasing out a gold balance to a business.

Only about 50 years ago, most banks used to store and lend money as gold and silver. The government quit backing paper dollars with gold in any way by not allowing anyone to exchange them for a specific amount of gold.

The reality is, we don’t need anyone’s permission to start doing what we know is right. We can start using gold and silver with each other now. This puts our own finances back on a gold standard. You could open a gold and silver account today. I’d like to show you one good way to do that here.

The United Precious Metals Association (UPMA) provides a way that you can cost-effectively store your money in gold and silver coins. It is an online service that gives you three kinds of accounts: a U.S Silver Dollar account, a U.S. Gold Dollar account and a Goldback account, which are real gold bills you can use as cash. The service allows you to pay for things directly to other account holders too. This means that you can do digital transactions in gold and sliver online which removes the inconvenience of delivering physical metal.

By opening a gold and silver account at the UPMA, you protect your money from inflation, inappropriate taxation and from the control of the corrupt banking system. Another great feature is that you can even earn interest on your gold and silver if you choose to do that with a portion of your savings.

These accounts are serviced by a gold and silver depository called Alpine Gold Exchange and are:

  • Easy to use online,
  • 100% insured,
  • Available to both individuals and business entities.
  • There is no cost to sign up,
  • No commitment to making or investments required,
  • No minimum balance required.

Open a Free Account

The existing corrupt financial system steals money secretly through inflation. By making money easier to borrow, governments revalue their currency by increasing the amount that is loaned into existence. This video explains more about inflation and how UPMA accounts help protect us:

The UPMA is not just a another place to store your investments in gold. It’s a completely different concept. It’s organized as a non-profit organization. It’s an association of members that has the feel of a credit union that exists for its members.

Understanding the “Zero Spread”

Did you know that most gold dealers don’t post the same prices for buying and selling? What you usually see is the price you will have to pay, not the price they would pay you (which is much lower!) The UPMA is very different. When you choose to hold your money in an account at the UPMA, they don’t sell the gold to you at one price and then only take the gold back at a lower price. This practice is called the buy/sell spread. UPMA members always get the posted rates for both buying and selling, unless you sell more that $10,000 in a month.

To be very clear, when you choose to take physical possession of your coins and then attempt to physically deliver them back, there is a market-based spread, but if you exchange back and forth from paper dollars, the posted price works both ways. The zero spread is limited.

If you exchange more than $10,000 paper dollars in a single month, you will be charged a market based spread for that. The UPMA isn’t a “trading platform”. It’s actually a financial institution for regular people who just want to use gold and silver as money. Since most people don’t spend more than $10,000 a month unless they are trying to trade, it makes sense. If you are a trader, you may want to become a coin store or something like that. The UPMA is intended to help us actually use gold and sliver.

As far as I know all gold dealers charge a spread. This is something that makes the UPMA very unique.

Considering Storage Options

I personally believe it is important to keep some of the actual metal at home. If we use it in place of cash, then you need to have some actual metal to use to pay for things. One of the problems, though, is that having a lot of cash at home, starts to become a risk. Wouldn’t it be nice to also have a place to store larger amounts that is protected from flood, fire and is both audited and insured?

The UPMA holds your money physically in gold or silver in its high-security professional storage facility. They take physical records and maintain those outside of a computer as well. Splitting your metal holdings between what you have at home and what you store in a professional facility really makes sense when you think about it.

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What Using U.S. Coins Means for Taxes

The UPMA holds your gold and silver in U.S. silver and gold coins with an option to store in Goldbacks as well. This means that you are buying and selling using money not barter. It also means that you shouldn’t have to pay taxes just for spending your gold or silver money to buy things.

Unfortunately, the federal government’s enforcement doesn’t match the law. Much will have to be done by our states to hold both state and federal officials to the law and remove those who don’t.

Because of the illegal activity by government agencies and states, I still recommend that you keep track of your purchases and sales of U.S. gold and silver coins for tax purposes, unless you have a sheriff and a state that will defend you against government theft.

Pawning (Loaning Gold to Yourself)

When you use U.S. gold and silver coins to make purchases, you should not be required to pay capital gains taxes. Taxing authorities appear to be requiring that conversions from gold to paper dollars be reported on tax forms. If they decide not to recognize the transaction as a legal tender but instead as barter, the move from metal to paper might trigger the government to wrongfully assert that you must pay capital gains tax.

For this reason, the UPMA is also offering a pawn service option. It’s like loaning your gold to yourself. It does have a cost, because you must pay a pawn broker to manage the loan until you “pay yourself back” what you borrow from your account. But since you borrowed to get cash, there was no capital gain. Even though this shouldn’t be a tax consideration, it is another service provided to UPMA members to make sure that there isn’t any wrongful government interference.

Open a Free Account

So there is a safe way to store large amounts of gold.

It’s important to understand the costs too. Since gold and silver are real things, they must be stored by someone and that does have a cost. This is one way that Alpine Gold gets paid.

Storage Fees

The storage fees are .05% every month paid for in gold and silver. So, 1 ounce of gold costs .05 ounces a month. If gold was valued at $3000 per ounce, that would be $1.50 per month.

This is an important consideration, but I might add that it isn’t uncommon for the value of gold to go up more than 10% in a single year these days. Often it has been much higher than that. Paying $1.50 per month is $18 a year which is only 0.6%. The benefits clearly out-weigh the cost.

If you have invested your savings before, you know that there isn’t any investment that doesn’t have a fee (even if it is well hidden). These fees are low and clearly stated.

If you choose to hold only Goldbacks, there currently is no storage fee. More about Goldbacks later.

But there’s another very important thing you could do to avoid paying storage fees.

Getting Inflation Protected Interest

You could get paid for leasing out some of your gold. When you do that, you are not charged storage fees, and you get paid 2% in gold.

Leasing your coins is very much like having a one year “certificate of deposit” at a bank only you retain custody. It allows you to lend your money for a fixed period of time. The thing that really makes a difference is that the interest is also in gold or silver coin. This means that your investment is naturally protected from inflation. Even the interest is. That’s something that is nearly impossible to find in our paper money economy.

Leased gold is used to fund businesses. Usually, these businesses are the kind that have to keep an inventory of gold or silver in order to operate. Some of them actually mine which gives them gold or silver as a product of their business. When these businesses borrow in gold, it makes it easier for them to manage and tends to make the risk cheaper to insure.

One type of business that uses these leases to fund business is the manufacturer the makes the “Goldback”.

Golden Cash

That brings me to one of the newest local money alternatives that is also provided by the UPMA. A Goldback is a real gold monetary unit. It’s in the shape of a bill. Each one contains 1/1000 of an ounce of gold. The UPMA allows you to purchase these as well and store them in an account or have them delivered to you whenever you wish to withdrawal them.

Individuals and businesses can easily accept Goldbacks as payment. There’s even a calculator that keeps track of the average daily price. It helps you calculate the paper dollar exchange rate.

You don’t need to sign up for the UPMA or do anything to start accepting Goldbacks. They are private and a great replacement for paper cash.

Several states have decided to offer their citizens the ability to use precious metal-delimited instruments, also called specie, as legal tender in the state. This give the people of those states the ability to use gold and silver as money when they buy things there.

Open a Free Account

One of the difficulties with buying and selling with metal is that silver is heavy and gold is so valuable that you have to have very tiny coins in order to use it for every-day buying and selling.

The Goldback is a high-tech alternative to coined money. They are bills that use a modern process to put gold inside a plastic coating in very specific quantities. It’s a revolutionary new way to have and use cash.

There’s even a cartoon that teaches kinds the benefits of using real money. I found this Tuttle Twins episode to be helpful for big kids too. Now even a kid can own gold!

Legit and Fraud Protected

They are produced with technology that creates articulate designs and fraud protection making them very hard to fake. You can learn more about a third-party verification of the Goldback’s quality here.

The UPMA allows you to hold Goldbacks in your UPMA account without paying for vaulting fees at all. You can withdrawal Goldbacks from your account and have them sent to you at any time.

Open a Free Account

Getting Gold into Your Own Hands

The UPMA is holding your gold and silver but if you want, they will ship it out to you. Not only that, there are now gold ATMs cropping up around the United States. Check this out:

There are also an increasing number of businesses that are willing to exchange their goods and services for Goldbacks. There are even state government officials getting involved.

Some Notable Opinions

One of the most revealing and popular books about the fiat money system: “The Creature from Jekyll Island: A Second Look at the Federal Reserve”, was written many years ago by G. Edward Griffin. As a self-proclaimed critic of things like this, here’s what he has to say:

In this article and video, Alpine Gold and Mr. Griffin discuss the UPMA, addressing concerns and benefits.

Something More Important than Money

Having an honest money system is important, but what is more important than anything is being prepared for what happens after this life is over. It wouldn’t do any good for me to show you a way to preserve the value of your money and just let you die and and discover that God had expectations that you have failed to live up to.

This is the most important thing that I have to share because it deals with true wealth that happens after this life is over.

Please download my free PDF of the gospel of John and read it carefully. That will pay me more than anything.

If you are interested in getting a UPMA account, using my referral link to sign up will help me. This gives me a very small portion of your vaulting fees (up to a limit) which rewards me for telling you about the UPMA.

Sign Up Here

To join the UPMA you can use my link to sign up and it will help me. The sign up process is surprisingly easy! Just tap or click on UPMA below

I Bonds and TIPS Not Recommended

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I am not recommending the people purchase I Bonds and TIPS anymore. As I continued to study the reason behind inflation and the depth of the corruption of the people who benefit from it, I realized that investing in that system is not a good idea.

My original idea was to hold the government accountable by making them pay me when they print money, but I realized that this is a foolish idea because they also create dollars out of thin air and have no reason to be transparent or honest with me about how things are managed.

I have come to believe that the best way to protect yourself from inflation is to not be a part of the paper currency system at all. That includes not investing in bonds that are delimited in those currencies. That means that I can’t logically justify purchasing and holding I Bonds or TIPS.

Here’s some video clips from a video that helped me see the money world differently.

I am currently using and promoting the purchase of gold and silver to get out of the system that creates inflation and steals our money. I am a member of the United Precious Metals Association (UPMA) that provides solutions that help make it much easer to use gold and silver as money. Here’s one of their videos:

Here’s a good place to get gold and silver

Why Bonds are Smart for Savings

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Colorful Eggs in Small Colorful BucketsBonds are one of the easiest and most common ways to save money for the long term.  There’s a good chance you already own one.  If you have a certificate of deposit at your bank or your credit union, you own a kind of a bond.  CD’s are quite a bit different than other kinds of bonds, but they have many things in common.

Rather than going over different kinds of bonds, I’d like to explain why  they are a good investment for those of us saving for future needs.  In a previous article, I described two ways of looking at our investments.  Bonds are very useful for the part of our savings that we intend to preserve.

Bonds Eliminate Timing Risk

I mentioned back in my introduction to TIPS that bonds are actually a  type of loan.  CD’s are loans that you make to the bank.  If you ever wondered how to turn the tables on a bank and get them to pay you interest, that’s how.  If you have had a CD before, you know that it has an end date.  That’s how bonds work.  They “mature.”  When they do, you get your money back.

Because bonds have a due date, they are great for eliminating timing risk.  Bonds come with a promise to return your money on a specific day.  If you intend to go on a big vacation in two years, you can get a two year CD at the bank and earn higher interest than you would in a regular savings or checking account.  When the CD matures, you get your money back and all the interest right when you need it.

You can imagine what might happen if you put that money in a mutual fund for two years.  If you happen to have planned your vacation during the next stock market crash, you probably would have to change your plans.  It might be ok to miss your vacation, but putting off your retirement because you took that risk would probably be a bigger deal.

Certificates of Deposit and Inflation

Taking out a two year CD might not be that bad.  At the time I write this, CD rates are still quite a bit lower than the rate of inflation.  When that is true, you end up paying the bank to hold and protect your money.  That’s not always a bad idea.  Putting all that money in your house might be worse, but it sure would be nice to be able to keep up with inflation don’t you think?

I Bonds vs. CD’s

You might consider I Bonds for a two year holding time or more.  You can’t take your money out for the first year, so if you need the money sooner than that, it wouldn’t be a good idea.  If you need the money in less than five years, it would still be a pretty good idea to put your money in an I Bond because it protects your purchasing power at the cost of losing three months of interest.  It’s still better than most bank CDs at the time that I write this.  After five years of waiting, you can take the money out any time.  If you have more than 30 years to wait, you will have to sell your bond in thirty years and get a new one.  You can find out more about I Bonds in another article.

The advantage of using an I Bond over a CD is that you are more certain to keep up with inflation.  There are CD’s that allow you to “step up” your interest rate if the interest rates go up at some point.  The problem with that is that interest rates and inflation are not really linked.  The will of the government is in between.   Governments occasionally force interest rates lower as a way to “fix” the economy.  As a result, CD’s have proven to not be a very precise way to protect your money’s purchasing power.

Using a Bond Ladder

Ladder with fruitYou may have seen an article or heard someone at your bank talk about putting some money in a CD ladder.  This arrangement helps you take advantage of changes in interest rates over time.  It’s another way to attempt to deal with inflation issues as well.

The idea is that you split up your money, and buy CD’s or bonds with different maturity dates.  For instance you might buy one for six months, another for one year and another for two years.  The idea being that every six months you would have a CD coming due.  When it does, it allows you choose whether you need to use some of the money or put it back into another CD.  It also allows you to take advantage of changes in the interest rates as they go up.

When you are trying to save your money for later, bond ladders have much different purpose.  When you are using inflation protected bonds like I Bonds or TIPS you don’t really have to worry about the interest rates.  Remember that taking advantage of rising interest rates is the kind of thing we do with the part of our money set aside for opportunity investing.  When we are dealing with the preservation side, what we concern ourselves with is timing.  We just need to ask ourselves: When do I need this money?  In this case, we would use a ladder to put the right amount of money in the right place in the future to meet our needs.

Here’s an example.  Suppose you need your money in 15 years.  It may require that you take out a ten year TIPS, and after 10 years you need to remember to buy another 5 year TIPS when it matures.  You can think of your needs like buckets of money.  Let’s say that you have one bucket for each year during your retirement.  You need a ladder of bonds that reach to each bucket in order to fill them with the right amount of money so that you meet all of your needs.

Beware of Bond Mutual Funds

Bond mutual funds don’t have a maturity date.  Shorter duration funds may be safer than stock funds, but they are definitely more risky than just owning the bonds.  That’s because the fund share prices change every day based on market forces, not inflation.  I plan to explain that more in an article about mutual funds.

A Smart Way to Plan

Bonds are a great way to plan because they are based on time commitments.  Not everything in life can be planned, but for things that need to be, it really makes sense to use investments that have commitments built into them so that you can be sure to have money when you need it.

Stressed about Savings? Divide and Conquer!

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Piggy Banks

JamesCube (Pixabay)

Trying to decide what to do with the money you have can be stressful.  There are plenty of people willing to “help” you invest your money, but they rarely agree on how.  Just leaving it the bank doesn’t seem right, but neither does losing it all in the market.  I have found that dividing my money into two parts reduces the stress and gives me confidence.

Protection vs. Opportunity

There are two very different points-of-view when it comes to investing money.  It’s possible to look at money as something to protect for some point in the future.  It is also possible to look at it as an opportunity for gain.  Both perspectives have benefits, but they require that we invest in different ways.

When we look at money from a protection point of view, we want to make sure that we don’t lose it.  Our concern is not about future gains, but about having something at a specific time.

When we look at money from an opportunity point of view, we are willing to wait in order to get a big gain.  We’re hoping to use money in order to get significantly more, but we can’t really control the timing of it.

These two points of view, are at odds with one another.  Like the old saying goes, you can’t have your cake and eat it too.  We can’t protect something and risk it at the same time.  When we choose opportunity, we also choose to risk not having our money at a specific point in time.

Many of the professionals in the financial world are more focused on opportunity than they are on protection.  It’s good to keep that in mind when you seek help.  If your intention is to protect, you probably won’t need professional help.  With a little education, you should do just fine on your own.

Insurance vs. Investments

Those who intend to preserve their money are better off thinking about it like they would insurance.  That’s because when you preserve, you are saving what you’ve already earned.   You’re just making sure that it’s there for you when you need it.  A preservation mentality is helpful when you are saving for specific things.  Those things might include maintaining or buying a car.  Other things include buying a house, paying for college or for paying for retirement.  Preservation is good for those things that you already know that you will probably need.

When you want to use your money to take advantage of growth opportunities, insurance doesn’t really make sense.  That’s because you’ve accepted the risk that your money won’t necessarily be there at a specific point in time.

Promise vs. Potential

When we make a decision about where we put our money, we need to decide whether we care more about having a promise that our money will be available, or that we have the potential to gain when opportunity arises.

These kinds of financial arrangements are at odds with each other but they both have their place.  If there was no potential for gain, there wouldn’t be a way to have something to preserve.  If there was no place to save your money, how could you keep what you have gained for a time that you need it?

Determine Your Timing Related Risk Capacity

When I say “timing related risk,” I mean the kind of risk you expose yourself to by not having money when you need to use it.  Considering your timing related risk capacity is a good way to decide whether you should preserve or speculate.

source: nattanan23 (Pixabay)

If you don’t have any savings at all, then you are at risk whenever something doesn’t go right.  You really don’t have any capacity for timing risk.  If you have no extra money and your car’s transmission fails, you would immediately be in financial trouble.  It’s important to have emergency savings and not having it definitely qualifies a timing related risk.

There are other timing related risks you may have.  Retirement is an important one.  You can calculate the amount of time that remains before you plan to retire and the amount of money you might need for the rest of your life from that point.  These projections expose a risk.  If your retirement money isn’t there when you need it, you will probably suffer.  Other things have timing related risk too, like buying a house, paying for college or paying for family vacations.

When we think about risk, we need to consider what we would feel like if our money wasn’t there when we need it.  If the money you are thinking about isn’t going to be needed for a particular time in the future, then opportunity investing is probably a good idea for you.  If you know what the money is intended for, then preservation investing would probably be a better idea.

A Helpful Separation

I have found it helpful to separate my money into two distinct parts.  One is the part I intend to preserve as savings.  That part includes my emergency savings, the part of my retirement savings that would pay for my basic retirement needs and any other amount of money that I would rather preserve than take risks with.  These may include funds I intend to use as an inheritance or a donation.

The other part is for investments that I believe will eventually be profitable.  For these investments, I accept that I don’t know when they will be profitable and I am willing wait.

Less Stress

By taking your savings and setting it aside as something you intend to preserve, you don’t have to worry about how much money it makes.  As long as it keeps up with inflation, it will still be there for you.  The rest you can use to do some investing.  That’s the part you may want to have an investment professional help you with.  If things don’t go quite as well you expected them to go, you can rest assured that your savings is still intact.