Too embarassed to tell anyone I know IRL, but am excited for my new future. Been throwing alot of money with small things. PC, alcohol, movies (and im ashamed to say, funko pops). Recently i took the plunge and cut out alcohol in an attempt to get my life together, and i feel like i have a whole new start.
Year 1 you buy it for X
Year N you sell it for Y
Y>X, so profit? Not exactly.
What else could you have invested in? A low cost whole market index fund for example has an average rate of return of 7%. In fact, it’s the gold standard of returns comparisons.
Money has opportunity cost, time in market is important, money invested in gold, cannot be invested in other things. So you have to factor that into the profitability calculation.
The theory about gold, is it holds its value, so if you could buy 10 Big Macs for x dollars in year one. In year N when you sell for y dollars, you can still buy 10 Big Macs. That’s the goal. You have more dollars then you started with, but you have the same Big Mac purchasing capacity. Because your real world good purchasing power didn’t increase, it wasn’t a profitable venture.
https://buildyourstax.com/
This is true, which is why libertarians traditionally invested into gold because they didn’t trust the government to not artificially inflate currency.
And now it’s what you do if don’t trust the USD to not collapse.