What Happens To Your Gold When You Get Old?

Discussion of the Gold portion of the Permanent Portfolio

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Reub
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What Happens To Your Gold When You Get Old?

Post by Reub »

Ok. I've spent decades accumulating physical gold and storing it in safe deposit boxes. Now I'm getting up there in age and can no longer take care of myself. What happens to my physical gold?
rickb
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Re: What Happens To Your Gold When You Get Old?

Post by rickb »

Do you mean access if you're mentally or physically incapacitated, or in an estate sense, or perhaps something different?

A durable power of attorney you set up as part of your estate planning allows whoever you appoint as your agent to act on your behalf, which covers the incapacitated case (assuming the PoA you've set up allows this). 

Like everything else you own when you die, gold becomes part of your estate - and, hence, subject to inheritance taxes according to the value as of the date of death.  Also see http://gyroscopicinvesting.com/forum/ht ... 12#msg8712.
TripleB
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Re: What Happens To Your Gold When You Get Old?

Post by TripleB »

You may want to consider several options depending on your personal family situation and financial needs.

1) Appoint someone you trust as your power of attorney and give them access to the safe deposit box and trust that they will do whatever is your best interest.

2) Split your gold up into multiple safe deposit boxes and split the trust up, so that not all of them are handed over to the same person, or at least not all at the same time. i.e. They may access one of them per 6-month period, with a 3rd party such as your attorney, controlling information regarding the location and access to the boxes.

3) Sell all your gold, and buy ETFs of the gold. You lose being able to hold them directly, but someone else can more easily handle financial transactions for you.

4) Transition out of the PP into something else, perhaps even 100% annuity, assuming you don't have heirs that you want to leave money to, and can't trust anyone to really manage the PP effectively without you.

5) Transition everything to PRPFX or perhaps PRPFX plus 10% EDV, because it will be easier for someone else to manage this allocation for you.
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MediumTex
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Re: What Happens To Your Gold When You Get Old?

Post by MediumTex »

What happens to the rest of your assets?

I don't see anything unique about gold in this kind of situation.
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Alanw
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Re: What Happens To Your Gold When You Get Old?

Post by Alanw »

Exactly.  Your heirs will sell everything as quickly as possible, spend it all and wonder why you couldn't have left them more. :D
jackely

Re: What Happens To Your Gold When You Get Old?

Post by jackely »

Reub wrote: Ok. I've spent decades accumulating physical gold and storing it in safe deposit boxes. Now I'm getting up there in age and can no longer take care of myself. What happens to my physical gold?
I don't think the gold cares how old you are or whether you can take care of yourself or not. I suspect it just sits there doing whatever it is supposed to do according to the laws of the universe, of which it is probably not even aware (though it should be of course - it's gold, isn't it?).
Last edited by jackely on Tue Jul 24, 2012 9:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
dragoncar
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Re: What Happens To Your Gold When You Get Old?

Post by dragoncar »

Give it to me.  I'll take good care of it, and shine it every day.
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