The ITM Trading website has been online now for more than a dozen years. In the beginning ITMTrading.com did little more than tell you who we were, what we sold, and what the phone number was. Today at ITMTrading.com you can purchase gold and silver bullion, common date American gold and silver coins, and even better dated rare American gold and silver coins. You can also read articles that I write, and sometimes people leave questions (like 401k vs gold 401K?) or comments in the comment sections after these articles.

There are senior ITM Trading professionals that write and post articles at ITMTrading.com, and this particular question was left in regards to one of their articles. Just so you can see the question left in the comment section just as I did, here it is, regarding a 401k vs gold question:

Joseph Asks A Question That Applies To Many Americans.

This is a very very common situation today in the United States. And even though this is a very researched situation, investing in a 401k vs gold for your retirement is still rather misunderstood concept. We don’t have to look too far back into American history to find out that long before there were 401k’s there was gold.

In fact the founding fathers insisted on gold and silver currency as the currency of the United States because they felt that it was the least able to be manipulated, controlled, or in the worst case crashed.

The Founding Father’s Did Not Have 401k’s. They Had Gold.

So in essence the question of pitting a 401k vs gold is really a new one, or relatively a new one. Did you know that most of the mutual funds and financial instruments that you can hold inside of a 401k date back less than 25 or 35 years? Did you know that realistically anyone who has tried to work from the age of 20 to the age of 65 and retire by investing in a 401k or mutual funds, has not been able to do so because they have not existed that long?

When you start looking at the short term existence of these financial products versus the long time proven and historically verified performance of gold as a currency, then the question of a 401k vs gold starts taking on new views. But, I want this article to address the question that has been asked as specifically as possible given the relatively numerically vague nature of the question.

A 401k is a very interesting investment vehicle. As is an IRA. In fact age discrimination has been outlawed in the United States of America in most every fashion and in most every contractual obligation, perhaps with the exception of a 401k or IRA. You see the thing is you sign up for a 401k at a rather early age, when you get your first professional job or a job with a large corporation.

Realistically Most Babies Born In The US Today Are Already Sold Into The 401k Or IRA Systems. Their Future Employers Will Make Sure Of It.

Usually workers start saving a 401k when they are the least financially experienced. And then quite often, by the time the worker has amassed a serious amount of cash in a 401k, or cash value, or really it’s a notional cash value if you could get it out and if you could spend it. Anyway, the worker finds out that there is a huge penalty (a huge penalty of 10%) plus perhaps tax consequences if they wish to access the money they have saved before they reach a certain age. Threats of expensive consequences keep your money in the system, usually until the system loses your money. By then it’s too late.

So, Joseph, I completely understand your question and it’s not the first time I have heard it. Without having specific numbers, like your age and account balances, and even really really super important things like your goals and what you want your money to do for you, to factor in with an equation that takes into account your risk assessment of the gold markets and the paper investment markets, I can only generalize. So here goes my generalization.

401k vs Gold: Do Your Due Diligence.

Start studying your 401k closely. Look at what costs you to actually hold these investments. Factor in the cold reality that these investments are not guaranteed. These investments can go to zero, and in fact one could argue that they are designed to go to zero. All companies and corporations eventually fail whereas gold does not. 401k vs gold: advantage gold.

You Can Be Rich On Paper, But If You Can’t Lay Your Hands On Your Wealth, Is It Really Your Wealth?

Chances are if you’re like many Americans you hold no physical tangible wealth. You have a 401k, and a checking and even a savings account, but really unless you hold cash or physical wealth like gold and silver, you are not holding tangible wealth.

Credit and debit cards don’t count because they often get turned down and getting a bank to let you spend your own money can be harder than it was getting your mother to buy you a candy bar back when you were six. As Gerald Celente says, “If you don’t hold it, you don’t own it!”. He ought to know, he went through a lot of money and a lot of hell trying to buy gold through the gold futures market.

You Can’t Use Your 401k To Buy A Candy Bar.

So in the 401k vs gold question, one of the things you need to ask yourself is how comfortable you feel letting everybody else hold all of your wealth. Because in the 401k vs gold question almost everybody has a 401k, but relatively few people on gold.

401k vs Gold, I Mean Really Do Your Due Diligence.

Fat finger mistakes, FDIC reserve balances, Chinese stock market collapse, Federal Reserve notes, dollar depreciation, fiat currency, Jekyll Island, Dow collapse, stock market crash, dollar losing purchasing power, increased taxes, bail ins, negative interest rates, Greece, euro collapse, savings accounts become held by unsecured debtors, bank failures, etc.

Go ahead and take some time to study these issues and fully understand them. Then take some time to research the role of gold as an international currency that has stood the test of thousands of years and eras that come and go. What percentage of your wealth you think you should have in gold and silver that you can get your hands on at any given time and market comfort levels will vary from person to person.

After The 9/11 Attacks, Wall Street Closed. Some Americans Could Not Access Their CD’s, 401k’s, or IRA’s.

There is an old idiom that says holding 10% of your wealth in gold and hoping you never need it is a good idea. ITM Trading believes that every American with savings to invest in long term wealth should own some physical gold and silver.

After you do your due diligence, and decide how comfortable you are keeping your money in these international markets and investment vehicles when the vehicles seem to be crashing into the markets and the governments seize individual savings accounts to pay for the crashes, then please contact an ITM Trading representative to help create a financial strategy that includes physical gold to suit you.

In any event the simplest answer I can give you regarding a 401k vs gold, is that if you don’t own any gold that you can lay your hands on you are doing it wrong, because you certainly can’t lay your hands on your 401k.