So I decided to steer clear of banks.  I feel like most banks are rip-off artists, and some are even downright EVIL. So I started thinking… if I took that $100 per month and used it to buy gold or silver instead of putting it into a savings account, then at the end of that same ten-year period, I could possibly have saved up some quantity of precious metals that would not only retain their value, but GAIN value over time, vs the US dollar.

About 3 years ago I found this Bullion Vault company online that offered me a FREE gram of gold, just for opening a free account.  I have seen my fair share of scams, and I wondered if this was one of them. I wondered what’s the catch? At the time silver was trading at about $18 per ounce, and I got my free ounce and eventually just put this on the backburner and forgot about it.

Well, in January 2012 I wondered what’s up with that free gold they gave me way back then? And I found out that because I had never finished verifying my account or made a deposit, after 6 months they withdrew my free gold and closed my account.  SO I decided to give it another try, now that I knew the rules.  I opened a new account, in January, only THIS time, I verified my account and made a small cash deposit.  They gave me a free gram of gold, again, which I immediately sold for $53-ish, and then immediately used that $53 to get a couple ounces of silver–actually not quite two ounces, but almost. I also used my deposit to but a few more ounces, and was pretty pleased to see that I now owned some metals.

(My opinion was that gold was at a high but silver was a better deal.  You might have differing opinions, but either way, gold or silver, it’s going to almost certainly be worth a lot more than paper dollars in the future.)

I have been asked by friends, what if the price of silver goes down? Then my investment won’t be worth as much money as before. But my response is, if it goes down, then I can buy MORE of it cheaply, before it goes back up. After ten years, buying just an ounce per week, I will have about 500 ounces of silver.  Right now it’s about $32/oz, so at today’s prices 500 oz would be $16,000. If in ten years, silver costs $50 ounce, that would be $25,000.  I read some predictions of $200/ounce (read below, this might come a lot sooner), which would be $100,000.  That sure looks a LOT better than the measly $12,000 I’d accumulate by putting my money in a bank.

So I know that the price is going to fluctuate wildly, and the above example is waaaaay over-simplified, so the actual figures are just rough ballpark estimates.  But I’m pretty happy with my plan so far.  It’s been three months and I’ve seen the price rise and fall.  I’ve sold at a few peaks and then waited a few days and bought in again at the valleys. So I have made a little bit of extra money while growing my bullion account size, and it’s been really exciting.

So here’s how it works.  They give you a free gram of gold (worth about $50) once you set up your free account. You can then sell that gram of gold and use the money to buy about 1.5 oz. of silver (my preferred metal).  I think they charge .8 % per trade so if you bought $100 worth of gold or silver (about 3 oz.), the fee would only be 80 cents.  As the person who referred you to Bullion Vault, I would make 20 cents on your trade. I didn’t even know that they had an affiliate program until tonight, so I figured I might as well write up a review for them and use my link. Since I have been telling practically everyone I know about this website ANYWAY, I should be getting paid for all the word of mouth advertising  But seriously, you should click on the link and sign up for the free gold.

Real quick here are some things I learned that might help you:

• When you get your account set up, you will see your account has X amounts of gold and silver bullion, and where it’s stored (vaults in London, Switzerland, and New York). You will also see that they gave you a couple dollars, a couple pounds, and a couple euros.  What I did was use the buy/sell wizard on the right sidebar to sell my gold for USD, then use my USD to buy silver, and also my pounds and euros to buy a little more silver.  I still had a few cents left in each of the three currencies, but by using all three I was able to get a slightly larger amount of bullion. Since you can buy a fraction of a bar, you do not have to have thousands of dollars.  Instead you can grow your account gradually over time, buying as little as .001 kg at a time.
• The gold can be stored in the certified vault of your choice in London, Switzerland, or New York, but with silver the only option is London.  Once you have enough bullion in your vault for a full bar, you can choose to take physical possession of it, and have it delivered to you, but there are some fees involved with this, and I probably won’t ever have a need to actually have it delivered. Instead I will probably just sell it and withdraw the cash profits. Some people ask me, how do I know that the bullion is really there in the vault? The answer to that is explained on their site, stuff about transparency, daily auditing, etc., but in a nutshell, this company is the largest bullion dealer in the world, it’s not some shady start-up that is out there stealing from their customers.
• Recently they have responded to customer requests to quote prices in troy ounces instead of kilograms.  This is pretty cool because it was annoying for me to have to convert the measurements… I was kind of lost when I started out because they used to only show the values in metric, and I would have to use a calculator to convert from grams to ounces. Now it’s easier.
• In order to keep your free gold/silver that they give you, you will have to eventually upload a scan of your ID so they know that you are really you.  Also proof of address and bank info.  This weirded me out but then I realized this is to prevent fraud and money laundering and stuff, and it will be necessary later when you want to withdraw your money.
• If you decide to make a deposit, do it for free by online banking or mail a check, it takes a little longer to process but you will save yourself $30 by avoiding wire transfer fees.
• The temptation to buy and sell your bullion after a rapid price jump is probably going to excite you, but don’t sell until the price has gone up high enough to cover the .8% commission (on buying and selling) so if I bough $100 worth of gold, I wouldn’t want to sell it until the price went up at least 1.6% to $101.60.  But for example say you buy 3 ounces of silver on Monday at 32.00/oz, then on Tuesday the sell price hits 33.00.  That is a 3.125% raise in price, which will cover the commissions and make me a profit.
• April of 2011 we hit a long term high for silver.  Price fell back down and is still way below that level.  So for now, odds are good for going long on silver and buying it up now, before it goes back up to that April 2011 price.  Of course this is my opinion and you should know all trading involves risk and you should do your own research, blah blah blah, don’t blame me if price goes down (but instead take that as an opportunity of a lifetime, and buy more of it when it’s cheap)…
• In June of 2012 (or around there somewhere?) the Pan Asia Gold Exchange is opening. Here is an excerpt of an article that I read the other day about this, for now I am just going to block quote it but once I track down the source I will add the link for it below:

The Pan Asia Gold Exchange (PAGE) is about to open soon. Estimates are by June 2012…

Again, please commit this date to memory: June 2012. It could be one of the most significant moments in financial history. A moment that can put a decade of market misery behind you.

PAGE will enable all 320 million retail customers – and 2.7 million corporate customers – of the giant Agricultural Bank of China to simply use their Renminbi, the Chinese currency, from their bank accounts to trade gold and silver.

This no doubt is an historic event.

….(truncated for brevity)….

So what happens when silver is finally unfettered? How high could it run?

We believe that initially, $200 per ounce silver would be a fair value. And we’re not alone.

Renowned gold industrialist, Rob McEwen, recently explained to Mineweb.com that as gold goes up… and if you use the 16 to 1 ratio… “$200 is conservative.”

Looking at this prediction, that means that silver MIGHT see a 600% increase in price in a matter of just a few months. If you were lucky enough to buy 1 kg now at the price of about $1/gram, your $1000-ish investment would then be worth $6000-ish. That is pretty amazing, and I cannot say how likely this scenario is, but come June 2012, we shall see how it goes. So if you just set up your account and took the free $50 gram of gold today, and traded it for an equal amount of silver, you could probably just let it sit there and watch it shoot up to $300 in value before you decided if you wanted to make a deposit or not…

If you have a better, easier way to make $300 with NO risk, I’d like to hear it.

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