When do you have enough silver and gold
 

to get through 2 or 5 or 10 years of bad times and hyper-inflation I don't know if anybody has figured out the answer to that question. You probably can't have too much.

I think I need to read up on gardening at this point, and plan to start a garden in the spring. The ground here is frozen solid now, so I don't figure there is anything I can do now except read up. That and stock up on canned goods and staples when I can find them on sale.

Very, very few people around me see what could be coming down the pike. I don't know for certain if I'm right, but people like Peter Schiff, Max Keiser, Ron Paul, and Jim Rogers make arguments that make the most sense to me. I see real hard times ahead.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com

Add Mish Shedlock to your required reading.

I find he balances out the exuberance of the inflationists....

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

that depends.... Is your refrigerator box properly covered up with plastic sheeting, with a few spare wooden pallets stacked up for a windbreak? you will probably make do with what you've got.
several billion people currently live with less material wealth than ANYBODY posting here, and at least some of them will survive the economic decline.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Gold: 10 years x $25,000 / $825/oz.
Silver: 10 years x $25,000 / $10.25/oz.

300 ounces of gold and 25,000 of silver, in your possession right now, should cover you through a decade of hyperinflation and partial unemployment.

Are you there yet?

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Lets see, I make that to be about $500,00 current dollars.

I doubt too many of us here have that put aside.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

25,000 oz silver. Wow, that IS a lot. I guess at that point it would just be sitting in closets, in the junk drawers, under the bed, or used as door stop.....

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

I agree. But I was just answering the question.

P.S. My answer also implies that "get through" means to weather hyperinflation without experiencing a significant drop in lifestyle or standard of living, and also assumes you don't have other financial assets to fall back on, like a hefty savings or 401K account, or extra real estate. If "get through" means "don't die", see Fullpower's answer in Post #3.

P.P.S. I don't think we'll have hyperinflation, even by the "softest" definition I could find, which is at least a 25% average annual inflation for three straight years. This represents a 9x inflation compounded over a decade, which means the $500,000 current cash value would roughly be equivalent to the average U.S. household income in Year 10 of the hyperinflation. So I think my estimate is reasonable.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

I will defer to my hero, the Mogambo Guru:

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

My preps and garden are for weathering the storm. I don't intend to stick out with no decline in lifestyle.

My PM is to carry savings across the storm and replace the pensions we won't be getting in useful amounts.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Forget asking anyone here or elsewhere. Ask yourself the question, "How much is enough - for me?"

I asked myself that question a few years back. It's great to work through it and come up with the answer.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

It depends on what you want gold and silver to do for you.

Tell me what you want, and I'll tell you what you need. :ok:

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Please clarify this comment about the refrigerator box?

Oh heck. Now I get it.

Beef--make sure that you get the garden seeds very soon--do not wait until the spring.

Even in ordinary years I've heard that some seeds get sold out towards spring.

Learn how to properly store those seeds--low humidity and low temperatures. A silica gel dessicant (which can be recharged in the oven) to bring the humidity down, and then low temps to put the seeds into statis. Also buy whatever books you will need on all-season gardening and food preservation. I recently got one book on seed-saving, one on root-cellaring, and one on four-season gardening.

In the meantime I have three-year-old pepper plants alive in my south-facing windows (pepper plants--plus the rest of the nightshade family--indeterminate tomatoes, eggplants, okra) are actually frost-tender perennials. I bring the peppers in each fall and take them back outside in spring. Crisp, fresh peppers are wonderful in the dead of winter.

I also bring a few small parsley plants inside in fall so we can have fresh parsley all winter.

Many other vegetables are better preserved in some way. Tomatoes picked still green in fall before the frost will slowly ripen over the months giving fresh 'maters all through January and February if handled properly. Carrots, parsnips, squash and 'taters aren't even that demanding.

You do need to get started though. There is a huge learning curve and you need to start chipping away at it, especially while you can still get help from people on the internet.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

I would rather rely on the value of gold than silver. Storing 2500 oz of silver would be a pain, too.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Me too. I recommend a 70/30 gold/silver split. So in my example, that would be 425 oz gold and 15,000 silver. Still a lot of silver to store!

As unalga said in an earlier post, probably not too many people here with that.

So maybe start with this goal: 4 ounces gold, 150 oz silver. You'll be ahead of 99% of the crowd.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

425 oz Gold and 15,000 oz Silver would make you the local warlord wouldn't it? :wink:

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

When you can swim through it like Scrooge McDuck

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Hear that, sheeple? If you have no PMs (or need to replace some due to a tragic boating accident), you need to start NOW!

Alright, lessee here. I don't have any expendable savings or investments, but assuming PM prices stay relatively stable, I can afford to buy one troy ounce of gold per month. That's 12 tr. oz. per year, so it would take me...


35 years and 5 months to accumulate 425 oz. Then it's time to start on the silver. Assuming an average price of just over $14/tr.oz, I could buy 70 oz/mo, which would take me just short of 18 years.

Definitely not trying to bust your chops - just trying to put that into some perspective here. And you're right - about a Krugerrand and a tube of SAEs will put one ahead of 99% of the sheep.

Back OT, I think the Zimbabwe change thread is a good reminder to not forget about fractional gold. And I remember someone posting some stories from the Weimar situation, where if you bought a loaf of bread with an ounce of gold, you didn't get any change - If you bought it with an ounce of silver, you didn't get any change either. Bottom line, have silver to barter for small stuff, gold to barter for bigger stuff. As unwieldy as it is, you can get silver for a lot less than gold, and it may work just as well.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

You need enough to cover up what you already have.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Wish I had that problem, but here's my answer:


When it weighs so much that you can barely carry it as you try to run...





Or swim?

This is part of a description of what is known as Hernan Cortes' "Sad Night", one of the major setbacks he encountered during the conquest of the Aztec capital, Tenochtitlan.

(my bold)
http://www.archive.org/stream/mexico...rrich_djvu.txt

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

You'd be miles ahead of most folks, even some here, if you bought food, garden seed and paid off all your debt. Then worry about having some PMs. If you're not already out of the city, get out if you can. Find a place with water where you can grow at least some of your own food. If things really fall apart, people with tons of gold or silver will be trading it to you for any food you can spare.

My wife kind of sets her foot down on things I tend to go overboard on. She gently reminds me, we can't eat guns and gold. AND, she is right. LOL! So, take care of business first, like being concerned about those things you eat, drink, wear, or the shelter you need.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

"When do you have enough silver and gold?"

When the Rothschilds, the Rockefellers, the Queen of England, her cousin Queen of the Netherlands, and the rest the the power elite come hat in hand and ask to borrow some of your gold and silver. That's when you have enough gold and silver.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

Lars, I definitely understand your point. But the numbers I offered were not a comment on what you should have, but rather what you would need to withstand a 10-year hyperinflation (which was the question posed in the OP), which I don't see in the cards. (I see high inflation not hyper inflation, e.g. averaging maybe 10%/year.)

That's why I followed up with a more realistic objective, which is 1% of the worst-case hyperinflation scenario. With your suggested buying strategy, one could get there in less than a year.

Re: When do you have enough silver and gold
 

When you need to take in consideration the payload capacity on your truck to move your stash...