Self Reliance

One of the great things about buying hard assets is that it promotes self reliance. Self reliance is one of the most important keys to success as it helps to abate entropy. In other words, if your life is engineered so that you rely on others to fill your needs then your life will tend towards disorder, either very rapidly as in the case of the real estate market melting down or through inflationary attrition.

By taking some of your money slated to saving or investing and using it to buy hard assets you will have one more form of wealth in your tool box. You will also have a form that cannot be taken away by a bank going under, or by a rogue trader burying the company in which you're a stockholder in a mountain of risky derivatives.

There is a wide range of hard assets available to people based on their interests. High end watches, art, cars, guns, diamonds and gold come to mind first. But neither anything that is sought after by collectors can be considered a hard asset. For my purposes I wouldn't consider livestock to be a hard asset because it's not something you can simply store properly and forget, but many people might debate the point with me. They are of course fundamentally correct to consider live stock because the single most important feature to properly acquiring hard assets is that you understand the asset at a basal level. It must capture the attention of your Id so to speak.

Coins and precious metals are by far the best hard asset to buy, simply because they are the most liquid. Other hard assets such as cars or guns can be somewhat difficult to sell. You have absolutely got to find the right guy when he has money in his pocket. Diamonds are liquid but the entire market is dominated by people trying to buy them cheap and so you have incredibly large spreads. Other than coins and precious metals nothing offers such a tight market (buy/sell spreads) and the ability to get fast cash most anywhere.

Remember, self reliance is a hard won attribute but well worth it. Promote self reliance to yourself, friends, and children by encouraging them to sock some metals away.