Can I Accept Gold?
"You can accept almost anything mutually agreeable to you and the other party as payment. That's the definition of ""barter"". If you agree to trade manufactured goods for livestock, as long as both parties agree on the terms, I'm not aware of any law that would prohibit it. I hedged with ""almost"" because of course you can't accept something that is explicitly illegal. Like you can't say you'll accept cocaine as payment. Less obviously, there are laws regulating the sale of guns, nuclear fuel, agricultural products, etc. You'd still have to pay taxes, and it can get complicated to determine the taxable value of the transaction. Sorry, but you can't avoid taxes by getting your income in something other than cash." Of course you can accept gold as payment.  Would anyone pay in gold? Would it have tax consequences on your federal taxes? These additional questions are off-topic on this site about personal finance. "Yes. ""There is, ...no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services."" Taken from the US Department of the Treasury." Yes.  But the question is do you want to have gold?  If you are going to buy gold anyway, and if you can get a good conversion rate between USD:gold, then why not? If you are looking to use your earnings on things that you cannot buy using gold, then I'd recommend you take USD instead. Have fun!
"Gold is not an investment.  Gold is a form of money.  It and silver have been used as money much longer than paper.  Paper money is a relatively recent invention (less than 350 years old) with a horrible track record of preserving wealth.  When I exchange my paper US dollars for gold I'm exchanging one form of money for another.  US dollars, or US Federal Reserve Notes to be more precise, can be printed ad nauseam by one bank that is totally private and is never audited.  Keeping all of your savings in US dollars is ignoring history, it is believing the US Federal Reserve has your best interest in mind, it is hoping that somehow things will be different this time, it is believing that the US dollar will somehow magically be the first fiat currency to last a person's lifetime. TIPS may seem like a good hedge against inflation.  However, the government offering TIPS is also the same government that is calculating the inflation rate used to adjust TIPS.  What a great deal.  If you do some research you discover that the method for calculating the consumer price index is always ""modified"" since it is always found to over estimate inflation.  It is never found to under estimate inflation.  Imagine that.  Here is a chart showing the inflation rate as if it were calculated the same way as it was calculated in 1980. Buying any government debt is also a way to guarantee you or your children will be taxed in the future since the government will have to obtain the money from someone to pay back bonds.  It's like voting for future taxes." "The reason I don't want to get into here it is because internet debates over these things turn into an absolute shit-show, instantly.   In a nutshell, the (sane parts of) argument comes down to very difficult-to-prove assumptions about how perfectly fiat currency can/will be implemented.  - The (sane) case for gold is that it is very difficult to get into the kind of money-printing mischief that places like Zimbabwe and Argentina have got into when your currency is based on something with a finite and slow-growing supply. It's hard to print more gold.   - The (sane) case for fiat currency is that it is ridiculous to hamstring the entire economy by tying it to one arbitrary commodity with a fluctuating value and supply that does not correlate well with overall economic output.   A perfectly-implemented fiat currency, printed and ordained by a perfectly omniscient, perfectly competent, and perfectly benevolent central bank (let's call it ""God money""), is the ideal. That's pretty much axiomatic, and even sane gold-bugs would tend to allow the above, so far as it goes, including all stipulations.   In fact, someone inclined to believe in divine intervention might make a case that gold is precisely that: a hard-to-forge, easy-to-detect, easy-to-handle metal placed on earth by God in quantities just right to serve as currency.  The problem is that a really *bad* fiat currency is absolutely terrible: leads to nightmare-scenarios; people starving on one side of a fence while tons of crops are being burned on the other side because of runaway price-discrepancies, stuff like that. Again, even (sane) Keynesians will allow as much.   The problem is that the crazies, ideologues, and single-issue zealots come out of the woodwork when you start getting into this stuff, and tend to dominate the conversation (if ""conversation"" is a fair word to use). In a sense, the ""sane"" spectrum of debate boils down to an almost ideological divide:   - Whether you believe that a sort of permanent, technocratic, central-bank/currency-issuer is possible/plausible.  Because if it *is* achievable, it is almost certainly better than just tying the whole economy to the price of a single commodity. If it is *not* achievable, then it is almost certainly better to let the markets adjust and correct, however imperfectly, than to tie the whole economy to the whims and wishes of incompetent and politically-motivated money-printers. (I hope that makes sense, and that it is a fair representation of the conundrum).  The problem with making an argument is that you've got a hodge-podge of technical (and sometimes fairly complicated) nitty-gritty, plus a certain amount of starting-assumption/worldview/ideological stuff, all smooshed together, and almost all of it is very hard/impossible to ""prove"" via evidential scientific testing.   Both the technical and historical stuff have strong conflicting indicators, and it's obviously not possible to, say, set up two identical societies and let them run for a thousand years, controlling for everything but monetary policy, and see what happens.   Macro-economics is a very imperfect science. It has certainly given the world some very useful and valuable insights and axioms, but the testing methods are extremely indirect and heavily subject to interpretation: you really have only the historical record to draw on, and it is almost impossible to find examples that control for whatever variable is in question.   Macro, ideally, *tries* really hard to be science, but you're always kind of picking from bad examples when testing a hypothesis, trying to line up vaguely similar historical periods to isolate for some common factor. It's kind of like geology or theoretical physics, except with much smaller and messier data-sets. Ten thousand years from now, it will be much easier to look at the historical data and isolate for particular variables over multiple hundred-year spans across a variety of cultural, political, and socio-economic backgrounds.   For now, the peanut-gallery is chock full of questions that the experts cannot answer, and the record is full of exceptions to every rule, and a lot of it frankly boils down to worldview and ideology (with a healthy dollop of ""I'm smarter than you"" to finish the sauce).   Since I personally prefer technical questions to politics, I will leave it to others to formulate and debate those things." 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... I thought the same. Money as a transferable item is against future items, and debt is a transferable item against future money, which is also seen as a much farther into the future item.  Money = tomorrows item. Debt = tomorrows money = (tomorrows item)(time +1); or longer if we agree to pay it off over 20 years  Interestingly I have seen a writeup on why gold is the material of choice.   If someone can find this it would be great but I will try write from memory, Google is not helping. The story is something like this:  Essentially when trading a material for jewellery we had difficulty finding what material to use. Obviously it must be something hardy and tough, but not common. Metals are the obvious choice, although crystalline structures like gems and opals are useful. The reason for metals are that they can easily and repeatably be shaped into a form that will be aesthetically pleasing and hold its shape.   But which specific metal is to be chosen; obviously it must be chemically stable, so potassium magnesium and those metal like elements are removed from contention. It must be rare so items like lead, iron and copper are too common, although not worthless.  The most stable, malleable and rare materials are Platinum, Silver and Gold.   Platinum requires too high a melting point to be suitable; the requirements to smelt and handle it as a material are too high. Not to deny the value but the common use it prohibitive.   Silver is easier to handle, but tends to tarnish. Continuous upkeep is required and this becomes a detraction of its full value.  Finally Gold, rare, low melting point, resistant to tarnishing and oxidation, rare, malleable and pretty. A sweet spot of all materials. Dream on. You are parroting government apologists. The only real complaint against gold is that it forces governments to limit their expenditures to what they can collect in revenue. All the critics of gold are in favor of big government and deficit spending.  Gold is money. It is the only real money. And within five years there will be a de facto gold standard in international commerce. "Since you are going to be experiencing a liquidity crisis that even owning physical gold wouldn't solve, may I suggest bitcoins? You will still be liquid and people anywhere will be able to trade it. This is different from precious metals, whereas even if you ""invested"" in gold you would waste considerable resources on storage, security and actually making it divisible for trade. You would be illiquid. Do note that the bitcoin currency is currently more volatile than a Greek government bond." You stumbled on your second paragraph when you said gold is debt.  It's not. It is an asset you can hold in your hand that has zero counterparty risk.  Didn't read the rest because if you fell over so early, it's likely I'd be here all day correcting the rest of it. I would track it using a regular asset account.  The same way I would track the value of a house, a car, or any other personal asset. ETA: If you want automatic tracking, you could set it up as a stock portfolio holding shares of the GLD ETF.  One share of GLD represents 1/10 ounce of gold.  So, if you have 5 ounces of gold, you would set that up in Quicken as 50 shares of GLD. Owning physical gold (assuming coins): Owning gold through a fund: The Federal Reserve website notes that creditors must accept cash for debts on services already rendered, but that businesses may refuse cash for services not yet rendered unless prohibited by local law. The Treasury website includes examples of businesses limiting what cash they will accept:  For example, a bus line may prohibit payment of fares in pennies or   dollar bills. In addition, movie theaters, convenience stores and gas   stations may refuse to accept large denomination currency (usually   notes above $20) as a matter of policy. I still don't fully understand how gold is debt. I get that you made the connection that gold is money, and previously explained how money is debt. But that doesn't make gold debt.  Gold is a commodity just as oil, apples, deer, shoes, etc. It might not provide any utility, but is still something people have come to value in and of itself. This is an excellent question; kudos for asking it. How much a person pays over spot with gold can be negotiated in person at a coin shop or in an individual transaction, though many shops will refuse to negotiate.  You have to be a clever and tough negotiator to make this work and you won't have any success online. However, in researching your question, I dug for some information on one gold ETF OUNZ - which is physically backed by gold that you can redeem.  It appears that you only pay the spot price if you redeem your shares for physical gold: But aren't those fees exorbitant? After all, redeeming for 50 ounces   of Gold Eagles would result in a $3,000 fee on a $65,000 transaction.   That's 4.6 percent! Actually, the fee simply reflects the convenience premium that gold   coins command in the market. Here are the exchange fees compared with   the premiums over spot charged by two major online gold retailers: Investors do pay an annual expense ratio, but the trade-off is that as an investor, you don't have to worry about a thief breaking in and stealing your gold. "Is option trading permitted in the account? Most 401(k) do not permit this. 1 - it means none traded today. 2 - there are 50 outstanding contracts. Each one has a guy who is long and a guy who is short.  3 - not really, it might depend on the stock.  4 - no. With commissions so low, and the inherent leverage of options, one contract reflecting 100 shares of the underlying stock, the minimum is what you can sleep soundly with.  5 - because GLD does not reflect precisely 1/10 oz of gold's price. If you look at the prospectus, it reads ""The investment objective of the Trust is for the Shares to reflect the performance of the price of gold bullion, less the Trust’s expenses."" Since there are no dividends to take expenses from, the GLD price will erode by .4% each year compared to the price of 1/10oz gold." "Apartment complexes have had a long history of not accepting cash for payment of rent. This eliminates the problem of robbery and strongly reduces the risks of embezzlement.   THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE  Article 1, Section 10 of the US Constitution states:   No State shall ... make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts Previous editions of banknotes stated that the notes were redeemable in gold or in lawful money. The Mint Act of 1792 set gold and silver as legal currency (and that one did not have to accept ""base metal coins"" for more than $10 which is why coin rolls only go up to $10). The Coinage Act of 1873 dropped silver and made gold the legal standard for currency. In 1933, the ""redeemable in gold"" was changed by federal statute and the legend you mention was added. Prior to 1933, someone could demand that you pay them in gold and not with a bank note. Legislation in 1933 ended that. This clause in the Constitution leads some political groups to wish to return to a gold standard. I recommend reading the book Greenback as it describes how our currency got the way it did and why that clause appears on currency." begin having them take community college courses while they are still in high school - this should be a better use of time than AP courses. if they continue and get an associates degree the credits should be transferrable anywhere take the associates degree to a state school and have them finish just their two years (4 semesters) at the state school. that should be an non-stressful and affordable approach that will give them a time/age-based advantage over their peers. so instead of playing with financial aid and retirement plan rules, this sort of goal can help you save, without creating inconsequential and unnecessary expectations for yourself or your family