Apmex Citadel

As PM dealers go, APMEX has proven themselves to be very reliable and focused on good service. This said, their new Citadel storage services got my attention, too.

From the information available, it appears that Citadel Global Depository Services simply acts as a middle man between your purchases at APMEX and a third party physical storage company, currently operated by Brinks. While I have no doubt that Citadel would fulfill their contractual obligations, I pretty much lost interest in pursuing the matter further. In fairness, my very modest PM collection doesn't begin to justify using a service like Citadel. However, if I were looking for such a service, I'd want as few bureaucratic layers between me taking immediate possession of my metal as possible.

I've been looking at Silver IRA's for a while now, and almost every place I look into seems like it's phantom silver, which I guess is no different than owning stock. Any idea how much they charge for storage? I can't imagine it's that much, but does the cost hurt your potential long term profit?

I can understand that, Hawk, but the deal is, I have a lot of money in my IRA and I would like some of that invested in PMs. There are very few methods of doing this that are acceptable to the government and they set the IRA rules. I would not go this way with any of my money that had no strings attached to it.

Perhaps a good alternative is to take a distribution from my IRA, take the tax hit, and then invest that money in physical PMs? By doing this each year for the next few years, a substantial amount might be moved from an IRA to a PM hoard without triggering an excessive tax rate. Would have to consult with a CPA or tax attorney on the particulars but it could work.



You might want to re-think that. If one is prepared for disaster and nothing happens, what's the harm? If, OTOH, the SHTF and you are prepared, it will make a HUGE difference in your life and perhaps the lives of your family members as well. There are many kinds of disasters out there. I'm sure that the folks who got caught up in The Great Depression, hurricane Katrina, or the Japanese earthquake / tsunami / nuclear disaster have a very different view about this now than they had before those devastating events hit. Just because some cataclysmic event has not struck your life to this point does not mean that it never will or that it can't at any time. The bottom line is will you take responsibility for your own survival or will you pass that on to the government to worry about? I think that we all know that the government is not at all concerned about individuals.



Obviously, living way out in the country means that you have accepted the responsibility for your life and have a lot of the things that you will need, such as stored food, fuel, underground shelter (even if you just call it a root cellar), medical supplies, a good water source and purification for it plus more. Since you live in tornado country, some thought about what you will do when a big twister comes looking for you seem in order. Besides... if the world we knew went to poo, what need would there be to travel? Would it be better to be in or near a large city that is filled with unprepared people who are starving and well past worrying about killing others to get what they need to continue living? Somehow, I don't think so.

Yes, it is a good idea to consider costs for something like this. The good news is that the reputable companies out there charge a reasonable fee for such storage. High fees could be a sign of a fly-buy-night operation that should be avoided.

As to harming one's profit potential, that is possible to some extent but the gist of this whole idea is that there is money in paper assets that need to be converted into real PM assets. The methods for doing this are few but this is one of them. If an IRA is involved, the IRA owner cannot have any PMs in his or her IRA account in their physical possession. They MUST be held by an independent party who is authorized by the government to engage in such activity.

Storage services of this type can work well for those who do not want their PMs buried in their yard, in a safe in their home, or pushed to the bottom of their undies drawer. It is very safe and secure. Is it 100% secure against all possible problems? Nope. But then... what is? Personally, I favor a combination of possible storage options and this could be one of them. I would not put all of my PM eggs in one basket, no matter how good that one basket looked to me.

Considering how well PMs have done for the past several years and the increasing likelihood that this will continue for the next several years as well, this is looking better to me as an option.

While I have done well with my 401K plan and my IRAs, there is a double edged sword effect at work here. Yes, we do get a tax deferral with these plans and that does help to accrue more money over time. The 2nd edge comes from the fact that all of the long-term cap gains that occur in such plans are taxed as ordinary income when withdrawn in retirement. If one is in a lower tax bracket in retirement, this can still work out pretty well. If one is in a similar tax bracket, then it doesn't work so well, at least from the tax standpoint.

PMs have had substantial gains over the past dozen years. PMs are usually taxed at a 28% collectibles rate when sold. If PMs were owned in a Roth IRA, however, there would be no tax due on possibly some very substantial gains. That could make figuring this all out very worthwhile.

If any of the money is a Roth use that first to avoid the tax. I don't know your exact age but if you're past the 59 1/2b age I would just take a withdrawal that wouldn't have that great of a tax hit and be done with it and do it yearly in the beginning of the year so as to have the funds avail to buy on dips. I just like to have my Pms. Just never know. Always think of MF Global and how it was an old established stable company until GS Corzine took over. Terrible last 2 governors in NJ

Not to get too philosophical here, but that sounds an awful like the famous "Pascal's Wager" argument for believing in God. Basically, the argument states that if you believe in God (and, of course do all the things that God tells you to do) and it turns out God doesn't exist, you are no worse off. On the other hand, if God does exist, you will reap eternal benefits for believing and receive eternal punishment for not believing. So, the argument goes, it's better to believe and do what God says just in case he exists.

One of the big fallacies with this argument, however, is the lost opportunity costs. It's simply not true to say that "belief costs nothing," since there's actually a lot of sacrifice involved in trying to do everything that God has [supposedly] asked of us. Going to church regularly, ministering to the needy, resisting all sorts of temptation that you would otherwise enjoy doing, etc., etc., etc. You might actually be pretty upset if you found out it had all been for nothing in the end.

Same thing with disaster preparation. Moving large amounts of cash into PM makes sense in hindsight if there is a disaster, but if the economy eventually picks up and PM prices plummet as a result, you may find yourself with a whole lot of shiny metal and not enough money to actually take care of you and yours in your retirement years. Because true disaster preparedness isn't just a matter of going through the motions and buying a little bit of PM here and there. If you REALLY believe we are headed for a disaster and want to survive it, you pretty much have to be willing to convert most (if not all) of your cash into things like PM, real estate, food storage, guns, etc.

Now, don't get me wrong -- I'm not saying there won't be a disaster or that we shouldn't all prepare for it. I acknowledge that there certainly could be one coming and agree that we'll be better off if we are prepared for it if it comes. I just think it's a little disingenuous to say that there is "no harm" in preparing for the worst if the worst never comes, since truly preparing for the worst is going to require sacrificing a lot of things that I would otherwise spend my hard earned time and money on.

Another argument against Pascal's Wager is that his wager assumes that we know what God is "really" like and that he really would reward people for believing in him. What if God is nothing like what we imaging him to be and, say, actually hates people who follow like sheep and rewards rebellion? If that were the case, anybody who does everything they are told to do would be punished and those who think for themselves would be rewarded.

Similarly, what if there is a disaster, but not the type we are preparing for? Let's say, for example, I take all my money and covert it to PM which I store in an ultra secure vault under my house with guard dogs, alarm systems, etc. And then a sink hole opens up and it all gets sucked into the earth. Or I let a company like APMEX manage it and they turn out to be Enron-style crooks and all my silver mysteriously disappears.

Again, I'm not saying that preparing for disaster is a bad thing, but I think we have to acknowledge that are risks in doing so. It's just a matter of trying to figure out which risks are more likely and acting accordingly.

And yes, I was a philosophy major in my undergraduate days, why do you ask?