My son is 12.  Does anyone have any recommendations on good personal finance books for this age and up?

My 401k has some BlackRock collective investment trusts that I have a lot of money in.  How bad are these things really?

If I'm missing something, please let me know.  I'm a novice at this! I think what you're missing is that you're going to pay a lot more in fees than you would for a gold ETF/CEF, and you're not going to have actual physical possession of your gold.  You can hold IAU for 0.25% per year in your Roth ...

I've seen that program also, and wondered whether any of the PPers are using it.  I believe they also charge a 0.5% annual storage fee if you have them store the gold for you.  If not, then there is a delivery charge for you to take possession, but the website doesn't say how much the delivery charg...

I have been under the care of multiple gastroenterologists for over 20 years for an intestinal disease, and not once in all that time has any one of them ever provided dietary advice, or even recommended getting such advice from someone else.  Only in recent years have I figured out on my own that c...

Something you could think about would be exchanging some of your SGOL for GTU or PHYS, which are both trading at a relatively low premium right now.  That way you are diversified in your paper gold. Also try to get a few percent in physical gold.  Just start with one coin and see how that feels.  Th...

It sounds like his main reason for not buying gold is because the so-called experts say not to (or only up to 3%).  All other evidence is rationalized away.

How is 3% of any asset going to have any significant impact on your portfolio?

But do the gold bars have the lowest spread?  From what I've seen, the American Eagles and the Krugerrands have the lowest spread, so you pay less of a premium between your buy and sell points.  Also, the coins are harder to counterfeit than a bar.

I wouldn't even think of it if there were any penalties or taxes to be paid, but withdrawing contributions from a Roth IRA doesn't trigger any of that.

But once it's out, it's out.  There's no putting it back in if we change our minds and decide we'd rather have stocks or bonds instead of gold.

Here's the tradeoff in my mind.  If we leave it in the Roth, it grows tax free, but it's paper gold.  If we take it out and buy physical, we have it against possible WCS, but we lose the tax benefits, which probably isn't that big a deal, because we'll probably die without ever selling it and just l...

Good question.  I should have covered that.  We can't buy any more gold with our non-retirement money, because that's our emergency fund plus some savings toward some future big purchases.

What is your overall plan?  Are you planning to re-balance every month?  I doubt it. My backtesting, and that of others I've read, indicates that wider re-balancing bands give better returns (up to a point of course), probably due to momentum. Do you know which way gold is going from here? I'd recom...