So far I’ve just grown my 401(k), stock portfolio and savings but in case  SHTF those might be worth nothing or they might not be accessible. I also keep some cash in my safe but paper money could become worthless. That’s why I’ve been wanting to buy precious metals for quite some time now but never had the time to really figure out what and where to buy.

There’s a lot of different choices you could invest in gold, platinum and rhodium in addition to silver but using them in a bartering situation might be quite inconvinient because of their value unless of course you are buying something a lot. Silver is more convinient for bartering. So as a test run I just bought myself a few 1 troy oz .999 fine silver bars and rounds from APMEX.

I chose those over coins because they have lower mark up and the numismic value of the coins might not be the same in an emergency situation. Also I’m not a collector so they don’t have any value to me other than what they are worth in their silver content.

Even if there’s not a total collapse of the financial system precious metals are a good investment against inflation and hard times. The value of precious metals always goes up when there’s bad financial times but when it’s good times the value usually goes down. Usually you’ll want to buy when it good times and the value is low. Currently it’s not at it’s all time high so it’s not the worst time to start but I do wish I had had started 5 – 10 years ago but little did I know then about investing.

Now that I’ve started this and it was pretty easy to buy from APMEX I’m going to every now and then when the silver price dips. I’m also now looking into getting some “Junk silver” in form of half dollar silver coins that are 90% pure silver. Will report on that later.