Got gold? The radio is teem­ing with ads pro­mot­ing gold as the panacea for our cur­rent eco­nomic and stock mar­ket woes, all tout­ing the many ways to prof­itably invest, whether in bul­lion, coins, ETFs or min­ing stocks. So maybe you’re think­ing you should own gold in some form since (accord­ing to what they say) it will always be worth something.

But does gold really have a place in your port­fo­lio? A thor­ough analy­sis should be made to deter­mine if own­ing gold makes sense for you.

First: are you pro­tected from risk? Not mar­ket risk, but acci­dents, law­suits, dis­abil­ity and death. These risks can do sub­stan­tially more dam­age over the long run than a mar­ket cor­rec­tion. Sec­ond: do you have enough in liq­uid sav­ings and are you adding to it in a sys­tem­atic way? The recent rally in U.S. Trea­suries has proven that the good ol’ green­back is still the cur­rency of choice through­out the world. Cash has the abil­ity to solve a lot of eco­nomic problems.

If you answered “yes” to the two ques­tions above, then you can begin to con­sider your port­fo­lio: Is it in bal­ance? Are you too heav­ily weighted in equi­ties? And what about the veloc­ity of the cash flows cre­ated by your investments?

What the ads don’t say is that gold is a single-use invest­ment with its own risk char­ac­ter­is­tics, not the least of which is volatil­ity. No doubt even a small per­cent­age of the pre­cious metal in your port­fo­lio would have taken the edge off of sharp losses over the last two years, yet over the long haul–when you account for inflation–gold has had lit­tle luster.

Instead of suc­cumb­ing to the lure of gold invest­ing, con­sider con­tact­ing a rep­utable jew­eler and arrange for a cus­tom piece of gold jew­elry for your loved one. Not only will it be an invest­ment in gold that you can actu­ally enjoy, you will be doing your part to add to the economy.

If you still are unsure or would like to dis­cuss it fur­ther, call me today to dis­cuss your finan­cial goals using the proven PS&G Model®, a tool we use at Chap­man Wealth Man­age­ment that is…

Well, you know…