How could I not talk about gold when discussing investments as an Indian woman?
My mom and many like my mom (Indian savers) are still hostage to the traditional view of gold. They believe it is a simple and useful investment. It is a great protection against all bad times. I am not even talking about ETFs (which is also gold btw) but ornamental gold with wastage and craftsmanship charges paid to these mega jewellers 🙈
I am not against gold as an investment. You can legitimately treat gold as an investment however, it’s not a very good investment and there are always better things to do with your money (opportunity cost). As an investment, like any other, it must be judged according to returns, with liquidity, stability and other factors. The 10-year return of gold is just 8.3% at this point, which hardly justifies the hype.
Above all, in many house-holds, gold sits in the lockers and does not work hard for enhancing your wealth at any time. A lot of people find it difficult to accept that gold is not a good investment because we instinctively think of gold as permanent wealth, a currency that has survived all kinds of historical troubles. I call this investment pattern as “Gold Bias”. Taking all these into consideration, gold does not make sense. Are you suffering gold bias?
🥂to high return investments!
