My first big error was skipping my company pension scheme when I started work in 1988. Fresh out of uni and full of left-wing zeal, I dismissed pensions as a capitalist plot. In any case, I assumed I\u2019d have moved onwards and upwards within a year or two.<\/p>\n
Oh dear.<\/p>\n
I stayed for a decade and only joined the scheme near the end. Early contributions matter most, with decades to grow. I’ve been playing catch-up ever since.<\/p>\n
Then, in 2000, I bought a personal pension with Equitable Life \u2013 just before it collapsed. At least I got my money back, unlike some.<\/p>\n
That same year, I bought the booming Aberdeen Technology fund at the height of the dot-com bubble. Two months later, the bubble burst. I lost almost everything.<\/p>\n
I learned from my mistakes.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve only made one huge error since, although arguably, it was the costliest of the lot<\/p>\n
As in investment journalist, I was commissioned to write about new-fangled crypto-currency Bitcoin in 2014.<\/p>\n
I briefly thought about buying some, but it all seemed a bit odd and technical. If I’d pressed on, I wouldn\u2019t be writing this today.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d be on a beach. On my own island.<\/p>\n
But we\u2019ve all got our \u201cone that got away\u201d. There\u2019s one, though, that really gets me \u2013 because I\u2019ve dismissed it over and over again.<\/p>\n
My single biggest mistake was shunning gold.<\/p>\n
Once mocked as a \u201cbarbarous relic\u201d, it’s the asset class of the millennium, and a barometer for the chaos of our times.<\/p>\n
For more than 4,000 years, humans have turned to gold to protect their wealth. Roman soldiers, Chinese peasants, hated dictators \u2013 all hoarded it as a last resort.<\/p>\n
And nothing has changed.<\/p>\n
Gold thrives in troubled times, so it’s shone in recent years. The 2008 financial crisis, 2011 eurozone crunch, the pandemic, Russia<\/a>\u2019s invasion of Ukraine<\/a> and now the Israel<\/a>-Iran war fuelled the 21st Century gold rush.<\/p>\n The weird thing? Gold has barely any practical use. It doesn\u2019t power anything, it doesn\u2019t feed anyone, it\u2019s barely used in industry.<\/p>\n These days most buyers never even touch it. They buy online, it\u2019s held in vaults. That\u2019s no use if society collapses.<\/p>\n But none of that has stopped its rise.<\/p>\n On December 31, 1999, gold closed at around $288 (\u00a3212) an ounce. Today, it trades at $3,329 \u2013 a staggering 1,056% increase. A \u00a310,000 investment would now be worth \u00a3115,600.<\/p>\n And I\u2019ve never owned so much as a gram.<\/p>\n This wasn\u2019t an oversight. I deliberately ruled gold out. I told myself it was outdated, too volatile, and didn\u2019t pay a yield like shares or bonds. I pointed to how it spiked in 1979 during the Iran revolution and Russian invasion of Afghanistan, then stagnated for 20 years.<\/p>\n The 1980s and 1990s were good times, relatively.<\/p>\n Since 2000, the world has lurched from crisis to crisis. And gold has become the go-to safe haven once again.<\/p>\n Investors should still tread carefully. If global peace breaks out, the gold price will crash.<\/p>\n Either way, I\u2019ve missed the boat. But that\u2019s not the real story here.<\/p>\n The real story is what gold\u2019s rise tells us, that the world is becoming a more dangerous and unstable place.<\/p>\n And the terrifying part is\u2026 it may just be getting started.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"My first big error was skipping my company pension scheme when I started work in 1988. Fresh out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":213849,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3093],"tags":[85068,51,85066,85067,474,85069,6615,2074,2499,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-213848","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-personal-finance","8":"tag-bitcoin-investment","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-company-pension-scheme","11":"tag-equitable-life-collapse","12":"tag-finance","13":"tag-gold-as-safe-haven","14":"tag-investing","15":"tag-pension","16":"tag-personal-finance","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114745493630840712","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213848"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213848\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}