Are you preparing for a possible dollar (USD) collapse? (How?)
There are two basic ways you can separate your investments from the dollar (or any other currency). I am not preparing for a sudden, major, catastrophic collapse in the US dollar. I am, however, preparing for a significant but gradual erosion of its value through inflation over the space of several years to a decade. To that end, I've invested most of my assets in the stock market (roughly 80%) through major world index funds, and limited my bond exposure (maintaining a small stake in commodity ETFs: gold, silver, platinum and palladium) due to both inflation risk and the inevitability of rising interest rates. I don't think most companies mind overmuch if the dollar falls gradually, as the bulk of their value is in their continuing income stream, not in a dollar-denominated bank account. I also try to keep what I can in tax-deferred accounts: If, after several years, your stocks were up 100% but inflation reduced the dollar's value by 50%, you're still stuck paying taxes on the entire gain, even though it was meaningless. I'm also anticipating tax hikes at some point (though not as a result of the dollar falling). It helps that I'm young and can stand a lot of investment risk. Depends what kind of expenses you intend to use this money for. If you plan to buy housing in the future (eg you're saving a deposit), then you need to ensure that the value doesn't deteriorate relative to the value of the housing you are likely to buy - so you could buy a Residential REIT, or buy some investment property. If you expect to use this money for food, then you should buy suitable assets (eg Wheat futures, etc). Link the current asset to the future expense, and you will be fine. If you buy Gold, then you are making a bet that Gold will retain its value compared to the thing you want to purchase in future. It doesn't matter what the price of Gold does in $US. I've thought of the following ways to hedge against a collapsing dollar: I recently finished reading a book that you may be interested in based on your question, The Ultimate Suburban Survivalist Guide. The author begins with a discussion of why he thinks the US economy and currency could collapse. It gets a little scary. Then he goes into great detail on commodities, specifically gold. The rest of the book is about what you can be doing to prepare yourself and your family to be more self sufficient. To answer your question, I do anticipate problems with US currency in the future and plan to put some money in gold if the price dips. "Invest in other currencies and assets that have ""real"" value. And personally I don't count gold as something of real value. Of course its used in the industry but besides that its a pretty useless metal and only worth something because everybody else thinks that everybody thinks its worth something. So I would buy land, houses, stocks, ..." I'd like to provide ideas other than gold, stocks, property, bonds on how to prepare for a severe crisis. My suggestions below may even make your life more happy now. "Buying gold, silver, palladium, copper and platinum. The first two I am thinking about new currencies. The last three for the perpetual need for the metals in industry. I also have invested in Numismatic coins. They are small portable and easy to hide around the house. I only collect silver coins, so even if the world really blows up and numismatics goes out the window, I can depend on them forming a barter system through the content value of the silver. The problem with collectable items is that they are easy to see. For example, a nice painting just shouts out ""steal me!"". I don't buy large gold coins. As long as the coin is below 1/4 Oz gold I collect it. If the dollar does finaly collapse, to be honest it will be so bad that I think weapons will be order of the day. Do I think it will collapse...nah never." The collapse of the US economic system is one of the many things I am preparing for. To answer the how, me personally I am doing some investing in gold and silver. However I am investing more in the tools, goods and gear that will help me be independent of the system around me. In short nothing will change for me if the US dollar goes belly up. A book I recommend is Possum Living (http://www.possumliving.net/). Other than that I am investing in trade goods such as liquor, cigarettes, medical supplies. "I think it's apt to remind that there's no shortcuts, if someone thinks about doing FX  fx: - negative sum game (big spread or commissions) - chaos theory description is apt - hard to understand costs (options are insurance and for every trade there is equivalent option position - so unless you understand how those are priced, there's a good chance you're getting a ""sh1tty deal"" as that Goldman guy famously said) - averaging can help if timing is bad but you could be just getting deeper into the ""deal"" I just mentioned and giving a smarter counterparty your money could backfire as it's the ""ammo"" they can use to defend their position.  This doesn't apply to your small hedge/trade? Well that's what I thought not long ago too! That's why I mentioned chaos theory. If you can find a party to hedge with that is not hedging with someone who eventually ends up hedging with JPM/Goldman/name any ""0 losing days a year"" ""bank"".. Then you may have a point. And contrary to what many may still think, all of the above applies to everything you can think of that has to do with money. All the billions with 0-losing days need to come from somewhere and it's definitely not coming just from couple FX punters."
"is there anything I can do now to protect this currency advantage from future volatility? Generally not much. There are Fx hedges available, however these are for specialist like FI's and Large Corporates, traders. I've considered simply moving my funds to an Australian bank to ""lock-in"" the current rate, but I worry that this will put me at risk of a substantial loss (due to exchange rates, transfer fees, etc) when I move my funds back into the US in 6 months. If you know for sure you are going to spend 6 months in Australia. It would be wise to money certain amount of money that you need. So this way, there is no need to move back funds from Australia to US. Again whether this will be beneficial or not is speculative and to an extent can't be predicted." While it's possible that the dollar could lose its grip as the global currency, it's unlikely that it will be quickly supplanted by another.  The world might simply see a a paradigm shift towards the use of whatever currency suits whichever counterparty at any given moment. Gold is money. If fiat money fails, only physical assets will count. Gold has been an historic store of wealth. Silver is also historically a good thing to possess when governmental systems fail. Don't buy paper gold, it is based on illusion. No one knows what will happen this time, but fiat money will likely fail again, as it has many times. Good luck to you for at least trying to prepare, you are an inspiriation. But then why wouldn't that be their primary mode to control their currency now/are they starting/hinting at doing so to move away from US treasuries? There must be benefits to Treasury purchasing that seems better to them, maybe that QE can't do alone?  And I have to imagine with the tenuous nature of their financial system, the shock alone from losing access to the Dollar (and before they could use QE to devalue the currency back down) would be a major issue. Technically, you could improve your odds in this hypothetical pre-apocolyptic economy by diversifying your digital and tangible precious-metal-commodity portfolio by going in with gold, silver, platinum, palladium, and others.   That being said I'm not sure if one can access tangible stores of all these metals... Rather than screwing around with foreign currencies, hop over to Germany and open an account at the first branch of Deutsche or Commerzbank you see. If the euro really does disintegrate, you want to have your money in the strongest country of the lot.  Edit: and what I meant to say is that if the euro implodes, you'll end up with deutschmarks, which, unlike the new IEP, will *not* need to devalue. (And in the meantime, you've still got euros, so you have no FX risk.) The ruble was, is and will be very unstable because of unstable political situation in Russia and the economy strongly dependent of the export of raw resources. What you can do? I assume, you want to minimize risk. The best way to achieve that is to make your savings in some stable currency. Euro and Swiss Franc are currently very stable currencies, so storing your surpluses in them is a very good option if you want to keep your money safe. To prevent political risk, you should keep your money in countries with stable political regime, which are unlikely to 'nationalize' the savings of the citizens in predictable future. As for your existing savings in rubles, it's a hard deal. I assume, as the web developer, you have a plenty of money, which have lost a lot of value. If you convert them to euro or francs, you will preserver the current value (after the loss). You'll safe them agaist ruble falling down, but in case the ruble will return to previous value, you'll loose.  Keeping savings in instable currencies is, however, speculation, like investing in gold etc. So if you can mentally accept the loss and want to sleep good, convert them. You have also option to invest in properties, for example buy an extra appartment. It's a good way to deal with financial surplus in Europe in US, however you should be aware, in Russland it's connected with the political risk. The real estates can be confiscated in any moment by the state and you can't run away with it (the savings can also be confiscated, but there's a fair chance you'll manage to rescue them if you act quickly). They wont let it collapse, they will devalue it over time to some effect via bailouts and borrowing.  Invest in commodities so your cash retains its value, physical gold is always strong.  Other currencies are an option but this is more of a gamble. You have currency risk either way.  The only question is deal with it now or later.  No one can tell you which action is better until we look at it in hindsight.  You could hedge and move some now, some later.  Invest your USD in US equities and move some to EUR and invest that in EUR companies. I'd suggest having your money in the same currency as where you are living, since for the most part, you'll be in the same boat as your peers and neighbors.  If you have high inflation, so will your friends and neighbors and you won't feel so bad.  And if your currency gets stronger, then so will the currency of the people you are hanging out with. It's similar to betting on Don't Pass in craps.  If you bet against the rest of the table, you could win when they lose, but then all your friends will be sad and you'll be happy. And vice versa, when your friends are high-fiving, you'll be in the dumps. I'd say it's better to be in the same boat as your peers since that's usually how we judge our happiness when we compare our situation to others. They're not going to do anything about it. Washington needs the debt wheel to keep spinning, or the Dollar will lose its position as the Reserve Currency. Then all hell would break loose. Powerful countries like Japan are going to have to take the initiative. And apparently they are starting to. It has to be countries like Japan because if a weak country tries this, they'll get invaded. as long as US bonds will keep their status of a safe haven and the dollar will continue to be the world reserve currency the bond rates will stay low. hell, after S&amp;P downgraded the US credit rating, the bond yields actually dropped, indicating an influx on money.   the shock will come. sooner or more probably later.. it won't be the end of the world, just another nasty downturn. I'm the equivalent of the FED at ROBLOX. I run a virtual economy there worth millions of dollars. Even though we are in the business of printing our own money, we've seen much more stability in our currency than in the USD. It actually appreciates over time. I don't think it would make a good investment though, nor would any of the online virtual currencies that I am aware of. "i hate to say it, and i will probably be downvoted to oblivion, but i don't think you can do anything.  i'm not an expert, so i might be wrong, but if greece (or any euro country, for that matters) decides to exit the euro, the currency will be dead within the week. that, from what i've read in various newspapers, will be an incredibly bad news for the european economy. which *will* collapse in a very short period of time. then the collapse would propagate (more or less slowly, more or less significantly) to other economies, especially china and US, possibly middle east, too.  at that point, you (well, we) have a major economic cataclysm. would it really matter if you had a tiny bit more money than your neighbour, if production stops, goods don't move that much anymore, and your country is generally in such a deep shit that the potato famine will look like a day in eurodisney?  i agree with what other people are saying: they will not allow the euro to fall. ""they"" sounds like hidden conspiracies, but even if european leaders have taught us that we can expect the worse from them (2 world wars in the last centuries are just the quicker reminder of their stupidity), there's the americans, the chineses, and so on.  i think the worst thing you, or anyone else in europe, can do is panicking and moving their money around. if the exchange rate with the euro is not fixed (and nothing is) you still have a chance to lose a significant amount of money in the short-medium run, in a worst case scenario.  chill. relax. if you're really desperate and think that things *will* go bad, try turning a hobby into another job, especially if you can do it online and can bring you a steady income eventually.  **TL; DR: if the world economy collapse, you will still lose money. live happy. chill.**" &gt; At some point we are going to have abused our global reserve status to the point the world doesn't want to extend it to us anymore.  This will happen *as soon as there is someplace better to go*.    This, in turn, will require:   * Someone running sound economics * Those sound economics not being dependant on US/dollar hegemony * The US not blowing them up  These are not impossible criteria, and absolutely will **eventually** be met, but I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that that point is a long way away at this point.   We have a lot of time, and much of it will be tumultuous &amp; uncertain in many ways- but the dollar &amp; US treasuries will still be the thinnest kid at fat camp until it ends. Imagine how foolish the people that bought Apple at $100 must have felt. It was up tenfold for the $10 it traded at just years prior, how could it go any higher?  Stocks have no memory. A stock's earnings may grow and justify the new higher price people are willing to pay. When FB came public, I remarked how I'd analyze the price and felt it was overvalued until its earnings came up. Just because it's gone down ever since, doesn't make it a buy, yet.