How to shelter financial assets?

Would any us survive such? Would we necessarily want to?

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I detest the idea (especially with metal detectors everywhere) of carrying valuable metal with me whether on my person, as checked luggage, or in shipment form. In fact, I see carrying as a real danger, greatly increasing any potential danger.

I and husband have active significantly legally protected accounts in banks in Mexico, USA, and Spain. I had planned on doing Hong Kong, but am now glad I did not, although i am still looking Asia over.

Jews lost their land and homes as the Nazis and stooges moved in, but I no longer own land in the current USA, and I am quite confident that Spain and Mexico will still protect my accounts for some time to come.

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@WendyBG

Paypal is global.

So are US brokages and banks.

If exterminations happen in the US I’ll be in Ireland.

If the money is there i will skip across Europe avoiding residence taxation. Less than 140 days allowed in Ireland

You can easily squeeze a few diamonds into your moccasins and conveyor belt/walk thru any airport x-ray machine in the world and not be found out.

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The question with using gold, diamonds, Rolexes, rhodium, etc. as a store of value to abscond to another location or simply to safeguard your wealth is fungibility: how do you redeem the value and turn it into something useful for your life? An ounce of gold for a couple avocados? A Rolex for a nice dinner? How do you barter these things when push comes to shove?

Pete

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More or less…
An ounce of gold = a month’s rent.
1/10 ounce of gold = a week’s food for a large family (or maybe a month of economical food like pasta, beans and rice).
1 ounce of silver = 50 rounds of .38 ammunition

The face value of precious metal coins is far below the precious metal based value. For example, the 1 ounce gold Eagle has a face value of $50.

Wendy

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Yes, I get the analytics of this. I’m wondering about the practicality, the ease of this. Do you see all or most vendors, managers, etc. accepting silver and gold again? To be truly practical, also, you need a relatively large populace to possess silver ingots and gold bars. Maybe eventually?

Pete

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Woman Selling Her Diamonds: But can’t you make it just a little more? Please?

Moor Buying Diamonds: Sorry, but diamonds are a drug on the market. Everybody sells diamonds. There are diamonds everywhere. 2400.

Woman Selling Her Diamonds: All right.

The issue with selling any asset, especially in times of great upheaval and chaos, is that supply usually outweighs demand. So you’re going to take a haircut. And where do you store all this value?

How to shelter financial assets is a question I’ve wrestled with for decades. Haven’t found a great answer yet. I think crypto is too volatile and easily manipulated and doesn’t make sense. But that’s just curmudgeon old man me.

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You’ve expanded well on some of my thoughts. I’ve come to a similar conclusion or, I suppose, fretfulness: i.e. how this barter actually works in the real world. I don’t see it ending well, even for those possessing lots of ingots.

Pete

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Gee, I wonder why this topic came up and is getting so much attention.

I’m not saying moving out is a bad idea, but reading about people fleeing Countries, they are often targets for looting from the locals, wherever they settle. Your friends need to know how to defend themselves, and have the “tools” necessary to do so, unless moving to a stable place like Canada. At least that is how I’d think about it.

Canada is close by, they are stable, and US Dollar can be converted to Canadian Dollars without getting took to the cleaners. At least so far, anyways. And gold or precious metals and stones can be bought once settled in, if they want to diversify their assets away from fiat currency.

Your brother Ormont would be the one I’d have your friends talk to, he has more international experience than any American I know of.

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I intend to discuss this with him when he returns from his latest cruise to Africa.
Wendy

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Moving to Canada sounded like the best plan until President Trump talked about converting it into the 51st State. This reminded me of the German Jews who fled to France in the 1930s, only to be swept up in the Holocaust after Germany conquered France.
Wendy

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A lot of the deportees from Germany were sent east. Then Germany invaded to the east, overrunning the area where they had sent the people they wanted to get rid of.

Steve

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With respect, if you seriously think there is any real chance of that actually happening (or a war to attempt such), then you might want to find a deep bunker in Antarctica to wait it out.

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I would think transfer funds electronically to other country bank and buy gold or other country bonds? Diamonds are a joke. They resale at 5% of the value when talking jewlery.

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If you’re really concerned about financial assets, I’d go for a diversification path. Pick 4 or 5 locations and spread the assets around accounts there. Maybe EU, UK, Japan, Australia, China. Something like that. Not specific recommendations in that list, just some examples.

–Peter

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And please let us know what he says. We started looking into putting some money in a Swiss bank account, but how to do it and what the tax ramifications were were unknowns.

We figure it would at least buy us time…

IP

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iirc, the “war on drugs”, decades ago, was leveraged to push a bill through Congress giving the government authority to monitor financial transactions, without a warrant. This was supposedly to trace transactions by drug cartels.

Does anyone here, think, for a moment, that law would not be used, to flag USians who are trying to offshore their life’s savings, and investigate them for “unamerican activities”?

Steve

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Because so much of our money is in retirement accounts, we will have to leave most of it in the USA. Easy enough to explain it as looking to buy a second home overseas and wanting assets on hand.

IP

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