This graphic illustrates what has happened to the purchasing power of the United States Dollar.
The purpose of money is to store purchasing power for later. This graphic shows us that after several difficult times in history, the dollar stopped being a good store of purchasing power after 1913. So, what happened in 1913?
In 1913, the Federal Reserve and the IRS were instituted along with the new monetary system that they supported.
One sure way to make yourself a slave is to become dependent on borrowing. Here’s what the Bible says:
The rich rule over the poor.
The borrower is servant to the lender. – Proverbs 22:7
In 1913, the United States government changed laws that made it easier to borrow money and to disconnect the printed money from the actual amount of gold being held in reserve behind it.
In the 1940’s, the United States government made it illegal for average U.S. Citizens to own gold. Even though this was the case, it was still easy to own silver. That’s because silver dollars, halves, quarters and dimes were still being circulated up until 1964 but by that time, the dollar had become so disconnected from the price of gold that even silver couldn’t be minted because it made the silver coins too expensive to represent what was imprinted on them.
Then in 1971, the United States government no longer allowed dollar notes to be converted into gold by anyone including foreign countries that had deposited their gold in the U.S. The “money” was now just an old note that no one really knows how much gold it stood for. Now we all have to guess because no one knows what the value is for sure.
Now, our earning power is quietly losing value to those who continue to create money by borrowing it into existence or simply spending them without them being there at all. If we were allowed to use gold and silver as money now, we could leave the paper system, but is it possible to simply start using gold and silver again today?
The good news is that the United States has a dollar that is already backed by gold. In fact, this dollar is gold. There’s a silver one too.
This is a real U.S. Silver Dollar. You can get and use these as money today. That’s what this article is about.
Thanks to President Regan and the congress, the silver coin you see above was legally required to be minted, along with the 50 dollar gold version below.
So, it is still possible to use gold and silver as money if we could find a way to use these in everyday transactions. This means that there is still a way to stop inflation, but how do we get everyone to stop using the bad money? How do we get paid in gold or silver? What about taxes?
In this article I explain the problems and propose a good solution. I’m going to explain how I got my own gold and silver account and why it made sense to me.
The first thing that I think is important to keep in mind is that we don’t need anyone’s permission to start doing what we know is right. God expects us to just start doing things right once we are sure what those things are. I’m pretty sure at this point, that using the paper dollar is promoting something that is harming all of us and promoting corruption in government.
What I have found that is that I can start using gold and silver today. It has been a slow process for me but it started out when I decided to join the United Precious Metals Association. It’s not the only way to do it but it is one that I use and recommend. Here’s a link:
The United Precious Metals Association (UPMA) provides a way that you can convert your money to 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.
Once I had those accounts set up, I was able to use those accounts to:
- Pay other members in gold or silver directly online.
- Use a debit card and spend my gold and sliver.
- Lease out some of my gold at 2% interest paid in gold.
I’ve been using it for about 3 years now and I’ve been protected from inflation. During the last year, silver went up in value against the paper dollar over 20%. Storing the gold has cost me about 0.6%, so you can see that even though there is a cost, the benefits have outweighed the cost.
My account is serviced by a gold exchange company but it is being controlled by a non-profit charter that it must abide by. The name of the servicing company is Alpine Gold Exchange and they are located in Utah. Other things I like about the UPMA 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.
The UPMA has some great videos that help explain the situation. Here’s one that explains the “inflation tax”. Governments can pay for things by creating money from nothing. They can only do this, though, when that money isn’t required to be 100% backed by something like gold. We end up paying a huge hidden tax.
I have found some confidence in the fact that the UPMA is organized as a non-profit organization. One of the important features to me was that it posts the exchange price every day and that price works in “both directions”, meaning that you can buy or sell your coins for the same price.
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 I choose to take physical possession of my coins from the UPMA and then attempt to physically deliver them back again, they do charge a spread spread, but when I go back and forth from paper dollars, the posted price works both ways. So, the zero spread only works when they hold the gold, not when I hold it. That’s one of the two “down sides” that I have found.
The other thing is if I exchange more than $10,000 paper dollars in a single month, I will be charged a spread for that too. I think this is because 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. It’s 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 my money physically in gold or silver coin in its high-security professional storage facility. They take physical (paper) records and maintain those outside of a computer as well. Splitting my metal holdings between what I have at home and what I store in a professional facility really makes sense to me.
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.
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 the paper dollar to go down more than 10% in a single year these days. Often it has been much more than that. Paying $1.50 per month is $18 a year which is only 0.6%. The benefits clearly out-weigh the cost even if the tax is corrupt. You actually pay more of it if you hold dollars.
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). The UPMA fees are low and openly stated.
There is another option but it isn’t considered legal tender in many states. 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 actually 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.
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.
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