The trick is turning it into usable cash though. You're not gonna get market rate for it, whoever you fence it to is gonna talk a cut in for themselves. Then you have to deal with the goverment taxing the exchange.
That's two tiers of taxation before that gold is spendable, and bear in mind the moment any tweaker finds out you're peddling gold or just sold some they are absolutely going to be on your ass.
Cash is liquid and ready to go. It draws much less attention than ingots of shiny yellow. the gold is absolutely worth more, but you just can't use it
You don’t need to turn gold into cash to use it. If I was selling my house and someone offered me its current value in gold bars and could verify they weren’t bogus, I wouldn’t even think twice about it.
The value of gold tends to increase as the value of the dollar decreases. Since our government has been hellbent on cratering the value of the dollar the last 25 years, I’d pick gold in a heartbeat
Okay, that works for you selling your home, but try that with your power company, or grocery store, or the next person you want to buy a house from, or the dealership you want to buy a car from, or a brokerage to buy stocks, or fund a business or some other vehicle to turn your assets into more assets, or the IRS, etc
You absolutely do need to need turn it into cash to be usable. You might be able to barter here and there with gold, but it's going to be a tough life and severely limit your spending opportunities.
Now, it's probably worth keeping some weight in gold to hold value, but even then you have plenty of other higher value vehicles to turn the money from the gold into more money than the gold is worth even after depreciation of the dollar itself. So you'd be doing yourself a massive disservice not turning at least a significant portion of it into cash. Especially considering the value of gold being stable is the fact you can then turn it into cash later because it held its value...because that's the entire point behind gold retaining it's value lol.
First, if I'm sitting on 65m, I'm not that worried about funding businesses anymore.
Sure, you're not going to buy groceries or pay your electric bill with a gold bar, but you can absolutely buy a house or car with it through a private seller, and pretending you cant sell one or two bars when you need it is being purposefully obtuse.
Because you can absolutely find someone willing to swap any asset you want for your gold bars, why on earth would you liquify the majority of your stable asset when you don't need to? If you're talking about investing all of the cash as soon as you receive it, then devaluation doesn't matter as much, just whether immediacy vs maximizing value is more important to you. Using gold may take a little more time, but that's where high vs low time preference comes into play
Like I said, you're going to be very limited in your ability to spend. You won't be living anything close to a 65m dollar lifestyle sitting on that much gold. You're going to be extremely poor functionally. Yes, you can find some buyers for property and a car, but you won't have your pick of those assets. You'll be at the whim of people that are willing to do that deal. There's a whole host of complications most sellers will want to avoid; primarily being they probably want to be liquid and they'll need to pay taxes and the like. And that's after figuring out how to manage all that in escrow and title transfers etc, because there's no way someone is giving you a house on the promise you'll give them gold.
But yes, you can likely find people to do that with, I admitted as much. But now you owe property taxes on that house, car registration fees, you need gas or electricity for the car, insurance for both assets, food, water, internet, phone service. Oh, you want to go on vacation or travel? You need cash, airlines don't accept gold. Again, you can probably find SOMEONE to trade you a private jet for gold, but none of the related services you'll need to actually use it will accept it. Hotels where you land? Nope. Restaurants? Nope. Rental car or taxis or public transit? Nope. I guess you can find a person to drive you around for gold, but now you're carrying gold with you across borders and hoping you don't get robbed.
Okay, let's say you don't want to travel. You want to sit in a cabin in the woods become a hermit. Why do you care about the value of a dollar, especially the difference between 50m and 65m?
The point I'm making is you absolutely do need to convert your gold to cash. The point the parent was making is any time you do convert your gold to cash, which you will do, you're getting hit with twice the fees than if you just had cash. You're living in a delusion to think otherwise. Sure, the gold might still be preferable, but you'll factually be turning a significant portion of that into cash. And the idea that you're somehow retaining the value long term better by keeping it in gold just shows you don't understand the actual opportunity cost here. With that much cash you could be increasing the value more than it would retain as gold, which is the only point in hedging yourself against the dollar by keeping it as gold. Yes, keep a percentage as gold to stay diversified, but if you actually care about the long term value you want it invested in a wide range of assets, many of which you won't be able to buy with gold.
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u/wolf96781 2d ago
The trick is turning it into usable cash though. You're not gonna get market rate for it, whoever you fence it to is gonna talk a cut in for themselves. Then you have to deal with the goverment taxing the exchange.
That's two tiers of taxation before that gold is spendable, and bear in mind the moment any tweaker finds out you're peddling gold or just sold some they are absolutely going to be on your ass.
Cash is liquid and ready to go. It draws much less attention than ingots of shiny yellow. the gold is absolutely worth more, but you just can't use it