Some things are better not discussed on public forums. Telling someone I put 20 billion dollars worth of gold buried on the back 40 is one of them.

Every individual has his own individual needs. My needs today are much different than when I was young and raising a family. I would never even imagine thinking about the things I think about today. It is never a good idea to put a persons self or family at risk by putting them in a position of danger. Having an excessive amount of valuables in personal possession is not a good idea. I do not do it, just like I would not carry a hundred thousand dollars of cash around on my person.

Unless a person thinks we are going back into the stone age (I do not think that), any emergency funds could be modest, maybe enough to live on for six months or a year. The vast majority of any gold or silver I own is kept in professional storage and in fact the bulk of it is in funds such as CEF, PSLV, etc. Even in extreme events like Weimar and Zimbabwe, the worst of the situation where society breaks down us usually less than two years and the very worst six months. People get sick of living that way pretty quickly and changes are forced to come about. I don't expect that here. But then neither did most people that lived in the places that it happened. It is a low probability event but a dire event if the probabilities land in your lap. Not something I loose sleep over, but also not something I loose sleep if my gold or silver assets go up or down in some fiat measured valuation. They are insurance. I don't loose sleep over my other insurance policies either. Insurance policies are not the majority portion of my financial wealth, and they should not be. Yet I would not want to be without much of the different types of insurance I carry. Including ownership of some gold and silver.

I've quit putting money in IRA's and my retirement account. Instead each month I buy gold or silver in a private account. I pay the taxes and choose to not participate in the tax preferred retirement accounts, but instead put the same dollar amount away in a private account. At times I question if I shouldn't be taking money out of my Roth IRA and taking it private, but the tax advantages of the growth of the account has thus far kept me from doing it. I hope I don't regret that decision and in fact may decide the risk to retirement accounts is too high for confiscation and transfer it to a private account. I'm over the 59 1/2 requirement so I can take it out any time I want. It is tempting, but the tax advantages of the Roth is just too big of carrot for me to avoid taking for the time being. Unless my farming operation goes belly up and my land lost for the lack of being able to pay the taxes, it is likely I will never draw anything out of the Roth. So the tax advantage is a big deal to me to let it grow tax exempt. I just worry that our government will someday when all the pension funds blow up say it is not "fair" that some should go without while others have so much so all retirement accounts become nationalized and we all "share and share alike". Socialism works as long as there is other peoples money to spend. Stealing it from a private account would be significantly more politically difficult, in my opinion.

More than you wanted to know. I keep very little gold or silver where someone could knock me in the head and take it. Too big of risk to expose my wife to the dangers of being my own Ft Knox.