Maria’s Note: Maria Bonaventura here, Tom’s longtime managing editor on Postcards From the Fringe. Tom and Kate are rafting down the “River of No Return” in Idaho. They’ll be completely out of contact until Monday. In the meantime, we put together some essential reading for Postcards fans this week.
Read on to find out the worrying reason why Tom and Kate put their life savings into gold – and why it’s not too late to preserve some of your wealth in gold if you haven’t yet…
Two years ago, Kate and I sold all our things, cleaned out our apartments, canceled all our bills, and hit the road with our kids and a small suitcase.
We now live like gypsies… drifting from town to town, country to country… sleeping wherever, homeschooling our kids wherever, and generally having the best time of our lives.
We’re currently living in a tent and driving around America, sleeping in driveways, backyards, barns, parking lots, approved campgrounds… and anywhere else we can find.
In addition to selling all our things and leaving our homes behind, Kate and I also converted all our savings to gold.
Effectively, we chose to make gold our home currency during our travels, instead of the U.S. dollar. Why?
I study economics while we’re on the road (while Kate and the kids do their schoolwork). At some point, it became clear to me that the U.S. government is broke.
No one says it this way. The dollar is still the world’s king currency. The U.S. government still functions perfectly normally. From the outside, everything seems fine.
But if you look beneath the surface, the facts are clear…
The U.S. government cannot fund itself without the central bank printing money.
We saw this all throughout the spring and summer of 2019, when there were weird goings-on in obscure corners of the money markets (see here and here, for example)…
We saw it again in September 2019, when the repo market blew up…
And we saw it in March 2020, when the U.S. Treasury bond market started imploding. The Fed had to print more than $1.6 trillion in four weeks to keep it functioning.
That’s why I say the U.S. government is broke.
It only maintains the illusion of solvency because the Federal Reserve prints dollars… and it channels those dollars to the Treasury via the banking system.
This chart shows the Fed’s total money-printing since 2013…
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In March, it went stratospheric. The Fed printed $2.9 trillion in just 13 weeks.
Meanwhile, the U.S. national debt (what the U.S. government owes the rest of the world) passed $26 trillion this year. That’s double where it was in 2010.
There’s no way the U.S. government will ever rein in its spending. So it’s very obvious that the U.S. dollar – and all the international paper currencies connected to it – are about to see their values drastically debased.
In other words, a global synchronized currency devaluation is coming. That’s the main reason why Kate and I converted our savings to gold in 2018.
Gold will be the only “currency” still standing.
– Tom Dyson
P.S. My minimum target for gold remains at $10,000 an ounce over the next 5-10 years. What’s the best way to play it? I explain in this video…
Like what you’re reading? Send your thoughts to [email protected].
FROM THE MAILBAG
A reader offers suggestions for the Dyson family, should they follow through on their plan to get re-married in Las Vegas…
Reader comment: You are all having a once-in-a-lifetime experience. You said you were heading to Las Vegas. May I suggest you find Route 66 along the way? This road before freeways was a major East/West road. Parts of it are still fun.
Go to Oatman, Arizona if you can, too. You (and especially the kids) would get a kick out of the burros (donkeys) that come to town every day and wander around. They had been used in the mines and just turned loose when the mines closed. You used to be able to feed them carrots but that is discouraged now. You can get some grain to feed them.
Oatman is a bit touristy now but still a fun stop. Take care and there are many snow towns to spend the winter all over the West.
While other readers are concerned about Tom and his mother, after he wrote about her worsening Parkinson’s Disease…
Reader comment: You may need to get yourself tested for the Parkinson’s Disease marker, especially with two parents having it. Plus you should also test your children.
Also, you have been complaining about being tired and with the fall coming, you need to plan out a place to stay sooner than later. According to the Farmer’s Almanac forecast for the upcoming fall and winter months, I say you barely have the month of September before the cooler temperature will rapidly come in. The Rockies are scheduled to get snow already.
So be safe, pick out a spot, settle in until spring, and get all of you checked out for those genetic markers.
Reader comment: Tom, I’m sorry to hear about your mom. Are you an only child? If so, the decisions for your folks will be put in your lap. I am an only child and I went through this with my mom and dad, so hopefully you don’t mind if I offer a few suggestions.
You can get one of those power-lift recliner chairs that your mom can sit in and be raised up onto her feet. They lay all the way back so she could even sleep in it. Also, it sounds like she can use a walker to get around. For the toilet, you could have arm rests installed so she can easily get up and down on it. They’re not very expensive and very easy to install.
A scooter chair was a great way for my parents to get around. I also paid to have a gal come in a couple times a day to make sure my folks ate, take their meds, and shop for them.
My mom eventually went into skilled nursing (very expensive) while my dad stayed in his apartment. Staying in the home and having the gal come by twice a day was less expensive than assisted living and even much less than skilled nursing. The ladies that came in for dad were very reasonable. God bless your mom! I bet you will get a lot of mail with suggestions now.
As always, thanks to everyone who wrote in! Tom will be back to address questions and comments on Monday, so keep them coming at [email protected].