Does anyone have any suggestions on how to hold their money while the y2k is playing itself out? For example, say it doesn't turn out to be much, then the person would want to get the money back into the banks, assuming they were still sound. Converting a lot of gold and silver back into greenback might be unwieldy. On the other hand, should this thing start to mushroom, then the logical alternative would be to have gold and silver. Is there a comfortable middle ground until we have a better view of how this whole thing is going to go?

-- John Townsend (JTooon@aol.com), July 21, 1998

Answers

Do you own your home? Is there a crawl space? Rig up a false sewer line and stuff your money in there. Put in a false light or plug socket stuff your money in there. If you bury your gold and silver, it can be found with a metal detector. Bury it really deep, put soil over it, then place old nuts and bolts on top, and finish covering up hole. Plant something on top or place a big rock on top. You can by hard plastic cylinders at army surplus stores. Valuables fit into these nicely and are air tight. Put a bird house up in a tree (plug the hole from the inside) and place your cash there. There's different opinions out there on what to hold monetarily. I guess it depends on how bad it gets, no one can predict. So have a little bit of each, cash, gold and silver. I think we will see bartering come into play. It's all pure speculation. No one knows.

-- Barb-Douglas (bardou@yahoo.com), July 21, 1998.

Remember Papillon? He had one of those cylinders.He put it where the sun don't shine and slept on his back.

-- Arthur Rambo (buriedtreasure@webtv.net), July 22, 1998.

That would truly be buried treasure.

-- bhayes (bkhayes@intellex.com), July 22, 1998.

That's a good one.

-- Arthur Rambo (buriedtreasure@webtv.net), July 22, 1998.

OOOOOOHHHHHHHH! That must of hurt!

-- Barb-douglas (bardou@yahoo.com), July 22, 1998.

This is not an answer. It is a request for more answers. Please don't clutter this area with idiotic remarks. We need an economics/financial plannner type to suggest various actions depending on the severity of the problem. Who's out there that has this expertise. My broker is burying his head in the sand.

-- Carl Snider (esnider@midusa.net), July 26, 1998.

Carl Snider- I'm looking forward to some serious answers even though I probably have less money than you to worry about. However, I can't resist:} If your broker is burying his head in the sand, that might present the perfect place, as suggested by one of the previous posters.

-- Carl Chaplin (chaplin@lillonet.org), July 26, 1998.

What to do with your money? The $64,000 question. Well, there are three ways to store wealth. The first, digital, includes everything from checking accounts to certificates of deposit to mutual funds to individual stocks. The second is to take physical possession of those assets in the form of certificates or cash. The third is to convert either of the first two into tangible assets such as precious metals, real estate, art, vehicles, etc. Which is best? After studying Y2K, precious metals, stock market theory, and the history of fiat currencies for hundreds of hours over the past year and a half (yea, I know, get a life) I can honestly say, I DON'T KNOW. Not to be facetious but there are too many possible Y2K outcomes to be certain. It all depends on how bad it gets. To preserve wealth digitally requires that the U.S. banking system is largely compliant, the utilities aren't down for very long and the Federal Government is able to keep paying the interest on the outstanding debt. Even without Y2K, we're headed for a nasty bear market in equities due to gross overvaluation, falling revenues, and foriegn economic crises so get OUT of stocks and mutual funds and buy FDIC insured CD's and the like. Keep it short term because it could be the real estate and luxury goods buy of a lifetime as the worsening recession forces many formerly wealthy people to liquidate those starter castles and luxury cars. That's case #1. Case #2 is the digital money system fails due to prolonged lack of electricity, lots of buggy software, bank runs, etc. but the Federal government is still somehow able to operate enough to keep the greenback alive. Here physical cash is truly king as the amount of paper dollars are unbelievably small compared to the now destroyed electronic dollars. You'd see deflation like you never thought possible. Everything that's not absolutely necessary for life would be a penny or two on the dollar. Case #3 is the collapse of the Federal Reserve system and along with it would be the dollar. Y2K would have to be pretty bad to kill the greenback but who knows? It could happen. If this is the case the only type of money that would survive would be gold and silver coins. Sounds kind of farfetched but paper money has a habit of collapsing rather spectacularily when the government that issues it has serious problems. Ask the Malaysians, the Thais, the South Koreans, etc. Metals would also do very well if we hit a hyperinflation in which a dazed but still functioning government tries to print it's way to recovery. My personal plans are to split it three ways between digital dollars, paper dollars, and precious metals with the emphasis on the metals as they're quite cheap right now and could easily take off to several times what they sell for today. If that sounds ridiculous considering gold's abysmal 18 yr record think about what most investors saw in stocks in 1982. Volatile prices, lackluster returns compared to other investments, frequent bear markets, and general disinterest. It was the start of the greatest stock bull market in U.S. history. Most people stayed away, though. They were to busy buying gold and silver which had posted remarkable returns over the past decade. Kind of like the stock market today.

-- anon1 (anon1@anon1.com), July 27, 1998.

I have most of my assets in IRA mutual funds which I can't touch for 10 years without penalty. However, I plan on moving all of the assets to a money market account a couple months before Jan 1. This way I should get a receipt of transfer and the money market is figured at $1 per share. Might work out OK.

-- Timothy Wolfe (tfw@mics.net), July 27, 1998.

Snider, you don't think it's idiotic to ask people with no "potential meltdown" experience where to put your money? I think my advice was perfect for a demanding anal retentive. If you apoligize to us, I'll give you advice you can use.

-- Arthur Rambo (buriedtreasure@webtv.net), July 27, 1998.