Retirement Advice

[amalekidad]

I know this question has been asked previously, but I think it is time to stir the pot.

I’m using Ag as my retirement plan. I’m thinking that I should plan on having 1oz/person/day.
My grandpa lived till he was 90. Let’s say I retire at 70 (I’m 57).
Me and my smoking hot wife = 2 people. So 20 years * 365.25 days * 2 oz = 14,610 oz
70 -57 = 13 years to stack 14,610 oz.

Since I DON’T have any Ag or other PMs I’m going to say that I have 13 years to stack 10,000 oz. That works out to be 770 oz/yr; or 65 oz/month.
At today’s price I ‘should’ be spending $1000/month on Ag.

OK, ladies and gentlemen, tell me the flaws. Also, this is the ‘logic’ I’m using on the smoking hot wife. Do you have any other suggestions I can use to ‘justify’ investing that much every month?

WbG aka Amaleki's Dad

[Thogey]

The buying part is easy and fun. Is this 100% of your retirement? Sounds really risky.

You need a liquidation and tax plan. Selling it off is the tough part.

[aloneibreak]

divide your portion to seven, or even to eight, for you do not know what misfortune may occur on the earth.

Ecclesiastes 11:2

diversification is key

just curious how you decided on 1 oz/person/day ?

[amalekidad]

I have 'other' retirement plans.
The one ounce per person per day came from a web group called Real Cents I want other opinions on this.

[wheeler_dealer]

For me personally, If I had $1000.00 per month to invest I would seek investments that spin off cash flow. This could be used as one of your retirement income sources.

[Recyclersteve]

If your wife is smoking, she may not live to be 90.

[68Camaro]

I am guilty of suggesting an oz per person per day as a measuring stick, but in my world that's not a rule but a guideline as part of a larger strategy, one which can't consider silver as the only thing between you and starvation/poverty.

Several have said diversify - absolutely. If you have an opportunity to own farm or ranch land with water and know what to do with it (most of us don't, but that's another story), that will generally be far more valuable than silver. Also consider whether or not you have control over any other capital creating opportunity that isn't dependent on world events for success. Do you have a critical skill that you can leverage?

And besides those things, the below needs are of greater important than mass quantities of silver and should be taken care of first, or at least in parallel with silver acquisition:

- become debt-free (less taxes that you can't control)
- live on your own free and clear property
- ideally get access to water that you have some control over (well, spring, etc)
- be relatively self-sufficient in the other major necessities (guns, ammo, medical needs, food, household items)
- learn how to garden on your property, and get good at it (then store seeds)
- stored food should be items that you actually will eat, and should largely be designed for long-term storage (20-30 years) and be sufficient for 2+ years per person). This is freeze dried and dehydrated foods, probably centered around white rice and beans (to the extent you don't have digestion issues with those), with freeze dried meats, dairy, vegetables, fruits, etc available to supplement the rice and beans. This store will get you to either the other side of a crisis or to a point where you've developed better capabilities for growing your own food or trading for it.

Once you get the above sorted out (and that's a 2-5 year process for most people) then you can improve on your large accumulation of PMs. I personally would not put it all in silver. Gold has a purpose slightly different from silver - I would keep 1/4 to 1/2 of the fiat-equivalent investment in PMs in gold. In the event you have to leave/move, the gold is transportable on your own person, whereas the bulk of your silver would require a truck to move and might have to be left behind.

[amalekidad]

Actually, I don’t have $1000/month to invest. The smoking hot wife keeps ‘investing’ in other things. She runs this hobby farm (17 acers) and allows me to visit on the weekends ;}. Her mom is 92 and an ornery old cuss. In all fairness, I’m definitely not married to Thogey’s widow or to ND Farmer’s PM hater. My wife wants off the grid and under the radar. My next big investment will be in a 500 gallon propane tank and a backup generator.
What I’m really after is for the folks on this forum to discuss ‘How much Ag or other PMs need to be, as part of a retirement plan.
So how does PMs fit into your retirement plans?

[amalekidad]

Thanks 68Camaro - that is the kinda of stuff I'm looking for. You snuck in there while I was writing.

[Treetop]

Thanks 68Camaro - that is the kinda of stuff I'm looking for. You snuck in there while I was writing.

If that is the kind of thinking you are looking for, Id ask your wife what she is growing. Most gardeners I know never bother with grains since they are so cheap to buy. which is understandable. BUT you dont need a lot of space to start trialing a few grains and finding a few that do well in your area with what inputs you can readily provide. Seems like a small thing to mst but should you ever be forced to rely on growing your own food, grains/potatoes are the most reliable calories. Beans and such as well, dry beans often ignored also. She might already grow a bunch but since most gardeners I know never bother I thought Id throw that out there. Seed for locally ideal grains and such are to me a cheap and potentially life saving insurance policy.

Then theres my customary advice of fruit,nut trees and berry bushes. Depending on where you live it can take a bit of time to find things that do well locally especially when including pests but most of us landscape anyway to some level might as well work in longer lived perennials. A well thought out orchard on the homestead once grown in is immensely valuable. Not just for food but fuel as well. Also fertility, most leaves are as good or better then manure for your crps or can be cycles through goats before using their manure.

Some see such things as extreme, its just good sense to my thinking, assuming you have some land. At some points in history people didnt just want to pass on their family home to their kids but also the family orchards. Even as a couple with no kids ages, the food from your trees doesnt track inflation, just the climate. I like to have a range of things including some wilder stuff so climate is less of a concern as well.

[silverflake]

As usual good advice from the usual suspects here on realcent.

Now after you have considered all this sage advice, if that much silver is still a goal, you must consider storage. 14000 ounces is a LOT of silver. Make sure you can store it.

As far as treetops suggestion of fruit/nut trees etc. - thats good advice. Let me tell you, i dug up some wild raspberries at my friends farm a couple years back and started propagating them. Easy stuff! Now i have some awesome raspberry bushes in my humble city plot. Going to add black berries this year. Priceless.

Stack.

[AGgressive Metal]

If you bought all name-brand 100oz bars you'd need 140 of them. That would not take up a ton of space if you dedicated the better part of a gun safe - OPSEC would be key and you want to bolt it to the floor - the back of a pantry or broom closet covered in old clothes or cardboard boxes maybe. 65+ yo couple with 14,000 oz of precious metal puts a target on your back if word gets out.

[Lemon Thrower]

What I’m really after is for the folks on this forum to discuss ‘How much Ag or other PMs need to be, as part of a retirement plan.
So how does PMs fit into your retirement plans?

I'm reluctant to give this sort of advice because one shouldn't rely on others for these decisions.

conventional retirement planners will ask you how much do you need to live on in retirement. you take your spending now and extrapolate it to your retirement age for inflation. in your case, subtract expenses you will have covered, like housing (but not taxes and insurance), water, some food, etc.

retirement planners will tell you to accumulate earning assets now and live off the interest. invade the principal at most 4% a year.

PMs are not earning assets so they are more like savings and insurance than a retirement plan. they should hold their purchasing power but should not be expected to increase their purchasing power. compare them to a rental property that your tenants pay off over 30 years - that is an investment, and it real (not paper) too.

[68Camaro]

Agree and am sympathetic LT, but he isn't asking for someone to make his decision, he is asking for wisdom to make sure he's covering his bases and making his decisions with the right background.

The other comment I'll make is that while PMs should be presumed to have fixed value that is an assumption, along with the amount you need per day, and your expected lifetime

Those assumptions are no different that those made in a capital earning approach, which still has to presume a spending rate and also (at least) an earnings rate (which isn't a dependable assumption these days). The primary reasons pensions have collapsed is because they were designed to perform as investments with a specific long term high rate of earnings which has been undermined by the Fed money printing and zirp policies. Which is why conventional individal retirement accounts will start failing over the next 10-20 years.

[Lemon Thrower]

Agree and am sympathetic LT, but he isn't asking for someone to make his decision, he is asking for wisdom to make sure he's covering his bases and making his decisions with the right background.

68, the comment wasn't directed at you. Rather, I meant that one has to decide certain things for themselves, like how much they need to live on, what risks they are comfortable with, etc. Even the idea that PMs will retain their purchasing power is to some extent a leap of faith - they didn't between 1980 and 1981 for example.

soliciting opinions is wise, and doing so here even more so, but ultimately you have to answer the questions yourself.

[amalekidad]

Hey folks,
All comments are appreciated. Obviously, I’m not coming up with 14K oz of Ag in the next few years. I’m ‘investing’ about the same meager amount in food storage and disaster prep as I am in PMs. The smoking hot wife is making sure we have enough beef, milk, eggs, … on hand. I tried planting some fruit trees but the horses and goats ate them. Short of building a fence around the small fruit trees, how do I keep the animals away? We have Muscatine grapes that come on every year. They are up to high for the animals. Anyone know if the goats will eat raspberry bushes?

[franklin]

Goats + anything that grows = disaster. You have to keep them out until the fruit trees grow high enough. Even then, goats will climb up the trees to get leaves and fruit. Horses are about the 3rd most destructive animal invented, just behind termites and rats. I have first hand knowledge as I have been the designated 'fixer of things that horses tear up' for the last 34 years.

[sparechange]

Advice on goat fencing---You'll know the fence you have built will hold goats if you can stand back with a bucket of water and throw water at the fence, and if no water goes through the fence then it should hold 'em!

[Treetop]

Not positive is goats will eat raspberries, but I expect they will because they will eat roses and other things with thorns. Mine wont actually eat everything, but pretty close. Goats can sometimes kill full grown trees if they can get to them and eat all the bark. If you want trees youll need fences most likely. That said even after the leaves fall you can rake them up and feed the goats if you want or needed to. Ive known a horse that got into an orchard and ate apples until it died.

[TXBullion]

Just to point out, I think there is always an issue and line that seems to get blended . People are either looking at silver/gold as a hedge/wealth preservation/ insurance/ forced savings etc OR investment, hope it goes up etc.

I think holding silver /gold can only be a hedge/wealth preservation/ insurance/ forced savings . You can not use it in the sense of retirement because the value is variable so if you go to retire thinking you needed 20 k ounces in your example and silver bottoms to 1 dollar and you actually needed 100k oz, your screwed. Its a big risk, you can't predict , it is gambling and nothing short of it. It is probable that it will have some value but we don't know if it will be 5 or 50 and we don't know quite what the relative value of the dollar will be at the time.

So you need to base retirement decisions in terms of dollars , returns, asset security, ROI , returns. That is more of a logical prediction because those metrics will provide dollars . Granted there is volatility there, uncertainty as well, inflation etc but I feel this is more probable for for creating a retirement plan in terms of cash flow you would need. 68 Pointed out a lot of good points. You want to control what you can , manage the risk on what you can't. Keep cost of living relatively low to what your planned income/savings are wipe out dent, live in a lower taxed home, have multiple revenue streams /means of income .

I think silver should be used as what really is at the root. a hedge of currency. Using it as anything other than what is at the root is a mistake. The mistake may play out in your favor, or it may not.

[68Camaro]

Substitute fiat money for silver gold and you're at the same place... Everything is a risk. Everything you list as "logical" is only logical in terms of historical norms; that's called normalcy bias. We have no idea whether anything will earn a return. Negative interest rates possible. Hyperinflation possible. Etc. You have to use your best judgment and diversify as noted. Going forward if the price was right I wouldn't rule out owning stock in a blue chip that has tended to survive past wars and depression and come out of it well, but if I do, if at all possible I'll be holding paper stock certificates in a fireproof safe and not an electronic account. Even then, be careful - what was yesterday's blue chip is today's bankrupt or dissolved company - scores of examples of that.

Just to point out, I think there is always an issue and line that seems to get blended . People are either looking at silver/gold as a hedge/wealth preservation/ insurance/ forced savings etc OR investment, hope it goes up etc.

I think holding silver /gold can only be a hedge/wealth preservation/ insurance/ forced savings . You can not use it in the sense of retirement because the value is variable so if you go to retire thinking you needed 20 k ounces in your example and silver bottoms to 1 dollar and you actually needed 100k oz, your screwed. Its a big risk, you can't predict , it is gambling and nothing short of it. It is probable that it will have some value but we don't know if it will be 5 or 50 and we don't know quite what the relative value of the dollar will be at the time.

So you need to base retirement decisions in terms of dollars , returns, asset security, ROI , returns. That is more of a logical prediction because those metrics will provide dollars . Granted there is volatility there, uncertainty as well, inflation etc but I feel this is more probable for for creating a retirement plan in terms of cash flow you would need. 68 Pointed out a lot of good points. You want to control what you can , manage the risk on what you can't. Keep cost of living relatively low to what your planned income/savings are wipe out dent, live in a lower taxed home, have multiple revenue streams /means of income .

I think silver should be used as what really is at the root. a hedge of currency. Using it as anything other than what is at the root is a mistake. The mistake may play out in your favor, or it may not.

[68Camaro]

68, the comment wasn't directed at you. ...

No criticism taken. Stack on...

[Lemon Thrower]

68 makes a good point about normalcy bias.

that is why doing things like paying off your home, sinking a well, planting fruit trees etc. is so wise. to the extent you do things now to take future housing, water, and food expenses off the table, then you don't need to have retirement funds to earn the cost of those expenses. a dollar saved is a dollar earned.

as for the fruit trees, some people protect teh trunks with flexible tubing like they use for french drains. don't know if that would help you or not.

[amalekidad]

At least I have accomplished one of my goals, the pot is stirred! 68 has confessed that he came up with the 1oz/per person/day. I love the idea but I know I can’t get there. I’d much rather stack Ag than muck stalls but I learned long ago that there is a certain amount of shoveling that must be done day to day, week to week ect. I just wonder if any of you have advice similar to 68. For example, we just bought a beef steer calf for the price of 1.1 oz of Au. I can sell a goat (if my wife lets me) for the price of 20 oz of Ag.

Part of my reckoning is to take 68Camaro’s rule as a good goal. Each oz of my goal could be in Ag, Cu, Beef on the hoof, pounds of wheat, and so on. What more do I want from y’all? Give me more ratios for things I ‘should’ invest in. Please tell me what you think you item is worth in terms of oz of Ag, Au, CTUs, …

Thanks for all of the input. It looks like I need to take part of the farm and start an orchard. Good thing I like apples.

[franklin]

Dude:
where are you getting $300 per head of goat? I need to bring some over there.