Looking to spread my savings risk.

Currently I have shares, direct ownership, old pep and ISA's etc. Some in a high interest savings account, but in these troubled times looking to spread into Gold.

Found this website, which at first glance looks very good.

http://www.bullionvault.com/?considerationCurrency=USD


I would really appreciate any comments observations you may have.

Thanks in advance FTBagain

I think you would be better off sticking with one of the established providers of allocated gold.

For example:
http://www.goldmoney.com
http://e-gold.com
http://www.pecunix.com

Check this site for more information on suppliers:
http://www.gdcaonline.org/

mhifoe,

Many thanks I will check them out.

FTBagain

Don't forget:

http://www.kitco.com
http://www.TheBullionDesk.com
http://www.Goldstock.co.uk

http://www.BullionVault.com

As Director of BullionVault I shall reply.

An e-gold style account gets you grams of gold which you can spend on goods. Typically the up-front cost of buying these grams is 3-4%.

The up front cost of BullionVault gold is nearer 1% but on very small amounts it works out to more - because you pay $4 per month minimum to store, and about $30 to wire money back.

(Please excuse me using US dollars here - but the gold market is US dollar oriented, even though we area UK headquartered business)

My personal view - which many might disagree with - is that gold is a form of wealth better suited to storing, not exchanging. This is based on a famous economic law called 'Greshams Law' which causes gold to be driven out of circulation by paper money.

BullionVault does not have the shopping capability that e-gold has and does not circulate in the same way. Instead when you want to spend your gold you convert back to a normal currency - by selling your gold in a competitive open market - and spend the style of money in wide acceptance - $, £, Euro or whatever.

What BullionVault offers instead is direct personal ownership (there is no intermediating trust), a choice of vaults (London, New York, Zurich), and a competetive marketplace at buy and sell time. We suit buyers of a larger quantity of gold and make their overall ownership cost less.

I see lots of advantages in e-gold style services -paticularly for international shopping - but if you want to store larger quantities for the long term in a visibly safe way (such as one recent house seller who came through this site did) you will usually deal for less on BullionVault.

Having started in April 2005 we are fairly new - but already there is more than $6m under our vaulting service and my customer feedback is very positive. By all means get in touch through our site.

Paul Tustain
October 2005

I have just placed 75% of our money into allocated gold.

The reason for doing this are simple.

Inflation is going up, saving account interest rates are going down. Oil prices are going up and this will affect everything else causing a recession. Most people are borrowed out so the powers that be will print even more money, to try to dampen the effects. Bankruptcies both personal and corporate are increasing etc,etc, etc.

I have been fortunate in that I sold my house in July 2004 and caught the top of the market, more by luck than judgement !! It sold for four times what I paid for it back in 1990. As you may guess from my display name I am past the first flush of youth. I was lucky again in that while we were working in London in the late eighties we decided not to buy a house, firstly because they were too expensive and secondly we were having too much fun. I bought this house for half of its 1987 peak value.

Many of my house owning friends were either repossessed and financially crippled or just financially crippled by negative equity and high interest rates at a time in their lives when they should have been amassing capital for their later years. The damage that the last house price correction caused was immense.

Once you have decided to buy gold, it is not as straightforward as you may think. There are two types of gold, Allocated and Unallocated which is odd but I will use a house to illustrate the point:

An Allocated house is one that you buy take physical possession of it and live in it.

An Allocated house is that you buy a piece of paper that says you own a house. But you cannot live in it because it has been lent to someone who sold it and bought some beachfront property in Chile with the money, but it is O.K. because he gave the lender an I.O.U. saying that he owes one house so everything is fine. The closest thing to this in the property market is buying " Off Plan " !!

The point is only buy Allocated Gold.

We chose to buy our allocated gold from the Bullion Vault for two reasons, one is they only deal in Allocated Gold and secondly we got one percent more Gold because of lower commission charges. I note that Paul Tustain the director of the Bullion Vault has written a previous reply. I pointed out to him that the Sell to Renters needed just such a service and am glad that he has written to this site.

Having actively followed the financial news over the last fourteen months and decided to trade money for gold. What impressed me about the Bullion Vault was the fact that now anyone can afford to buy allocated gold whereas previously you had to buy either a 100 or 400oz bars which go for circa 25k and 100k respectively. Now you can buy from one gram upwards circa £8.70. I think that this will have the same effect on gold ownership that Henry Ford had on car ownership. It means for example, that first time buyers can save up money for a deposit in gold. This is going to be very empowering for a lot of people.

The ability to buy and sell allocated gold 24/7 in different locations and currencies is also important as it gives these same people the opportunity to trade in an unleveraged commodity. The trading platform is the " Canines Testicles " ( About as good as it can be.) and will put ordinary folks on a level playing field in terms of speed and information with the professionals. So I urge users to take the time to learn about its features. Think of it as an Aston Martin CT9 sorry DB9 and read the instructions before you drive.

Dinosaur Dave.

[quote name='DinosaurDave' date='Oct 15 2005, 05:39 PM' post='213722']


Thanks DD a Laymans explanation -just what I needed!