You may call me Thicky MacThick but if we should all be getting out of GBP and USD where exactly should we be putting our hard earned savings? Just about to stuff the mattress over fear or banking meltdown and now even this doesn't seem like a good idea! Isn't whole thing a global problem that is affecting everywhere and everybody?

Maybe I don't understand gold, but I do know you can't eat it if inflation goes skywards and if things get as bad as a lot of people seem to think. Surely if they do then getting food is going to be the biggest problem and who's going to give you a tin of beans for a slab of shiny metal stuff?

Feel free to mock mercilessly as I freely admit to not having a clue but to being worried enough to have sold up and started renting some time ago; selling off the few banking shares I had when the rumours of trouble first started and trying to keep my savings away from dodgy banks as far as possible!

Any sensible suggestions welcome!

Thanks all.

Why don't you buy energy or agricultural stocks? Or silver / gold stocks if you don't want to buy the physical? If you want to play the 'safe' game, then NS&I savings are worth a punt - crap interest though.

The simple answer is that there is no simple answer. Do what you think is the right thing. Spread your risk around is sound advice (e.g. a bit of gold, some stocks, some cash savings, overseas deposits etc). Watch the £35k compensation limit.

I think you need to keep some savings in local currency don't you? I don't keep a lot myself because I discovered that over a 1~3 year period inflation rips the guts out of it. I tend to follow the opinion of Mark Faber, I look around and find what is cheap and has a reasonable expectation of appreciating in price and put my money there. I love chilli and 3 years ago bought 150kg of red kidney beans at $35/25kg sack. Now those beans are worth over $70 a sack! Around the same time I bought some gold and a sh*tload of silver @ $250 per kg and sold a little of it a year ago when it had doubled to $500/kg. I spent $3000 on this cool toy but it only cost me $1500 because that was what that much silver cost me originally.

It's true gold and silver are not very nutritious, but neither are houses, or paper stocks. Mind you your a bit late as far as the PM boom is concerned so you might want to do your own due diligence and have a look around and see what is still cheap and has a reasonable expectation of a) Going up in value. not being wiped out by a global collapse.

Good luck.

Whats Mark Faber reccomending? Other than Gold?

"Be Warned! Be Prepared! And Do What Exactly?"

Great topic OP! I've spent hundreds of hours mulling this over and still aren't sure!

In the middle of last year I decided on the following strategy and so far I've stuck with it although had many wavering moments:

-- 1/3 in euros in an on-call account (I live in Holland hence the reason all my cash is in euros).

-- 1/3 went to pay off a small house we own in Italy (it's our place to escape to if the s*** really hits the fan. I rent my main residence).

-- 1/3 is in shares spread over the following sectors: oil, gold, uranium, agriculture.

Pleased with the cash and paying off house decisions. The shares have taken a battering recently even though gold and oil are at record highs. I reckon my shares are going to face a lot more pain to come in the next few months but because I'm mostly invested in small caps (in New Zealand where I'm from) it's very hard to sell any volume when the market's like this.

I bought another rifle this week.

All these people with 2 or 3 or 10 posts suddenly arriving wanting to know what to do..... the sh1te has surely landed now....

So here is the answer -

Read.

Thats what you should do.

Read. Turn off your TV and read. And think.

Use less power. Then go and check to see if an elderly neighbour is ok.

Drink less.

Get more exercise.

Appreciate what you have.

Call your mum.

Give something to charity.

Take a part in your society or culture or community.

Learn a new skill.

If its tiresome, or annoying or irritating the chances are its a good thing.

Realise this and make the effort.



That way the world will be a better place and you wont give a fk what the stockmarkets are doing....



Alternatively, you could...




.....and the whole cycle will start again.

sell everything and short the sh!t out of the markets, opportunities like this only come up once or twice in a lifetime

......while keeping in mind that if this is the general consensus.........it may be time to buy.

I do all of those things already, except phone my Mum I'd need a clairvoyant to help out with that one. I have all my values straight, sell stuff for charity regularly and value all the right things in life. Oh and I don't drink/smoke or have a TV. That doesn't change the fact that I'm aware that my hard earned savings, which are the only things ensuring my very simple lifestyle based upon eating and keeping four fairly basic walls around me, are vulnerable to all this mess. I rent my home and can't do that without money. It's a fact that the world runs on money and whilst that's the case survival is dependent on it one way or another and that's not something that can change overnight without a lot of problems and suffering. Money isn't the root of all evil, it's what people do with it - my ability to give to charity and the charities ability to do good is dependent upon money enabling them to do so.

I appreciate your comments but I'm not sitting in my counting house, counting out my money with pound signs for pupils as you may perhaps think. Just an honest person who has worked very hard (can't now because of illness) and wants to be able to keep living a very simple life appreciating all my blessings! It's just about security for me, but I can't speak for everyone else, and some of the stuff on the forum makes for very scary reading - although I'm not about to go out and buy a rifle!

Not at all. The very nature of your question probably puts you in the top 1% of most prescient people in Great Britain.