When I was 20, I was walking through the streets of Sydney one day on my lunch break. As I crossed a busy road, I saw $2 on the ground — but I felt embarrassed to pick it up with so many people around. Immediately after, though, I felt guilty I had been willing to pass it by, especially when there were so many people — within sight — that could have used it.
More recently, I read an article about how in “The Richest Man in Babylon,” author George S. Clason describes a gold coin as being like a worker or a seed.
You may have just $1 in your hand, but that $1 can go out and work for you.
If you have $1 sitting in a savings account, it might feel as though it’s working for you. With my bank, I receive 1.8% variable interest every year. That means that if I place $1,000 in the account, at the end of a year, I’ll have $1,018 in the same account. Sounds good?
However, annual inflation lifted to 2.2% in Australia in the first quarter of 2020.
And while this reading doesn’t yet account for the full impacts of the coronavirus pandemic, it does mean that right now, prices are increasing by 2.2% a year.
Suddenly, that $18 I could make on the $1,000 in my savings account isn’t impressive at all. I would need $1,022 to have the same buying power I started with.
I often think about that $2 I saw on the street, which might seem strange.
But it comes back to the original premise, which is that every gold coin is a worker or a seed that you can use to make more money. It will work for you, not against you.
For example, if I put $1,000 into the Spaceship Universe Portfolio on 1 May 2019 — instead of in my savings account — I would have had $1,174.60 on 30 April 2020.
As you know, past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance, but for that one year period, my money would have worked for me.
(It’s also worth noting that a savings account is not the same as investing, in terms of risk. With a savings account, I’m unlikely to lose money, whereas with investing, I certainly could.)
When we at Spaceship say our mission is to enable you to invest in your future, we don’t just mean through our products, Spaceship Super and Spaceship Voyager.
You could spend money on a class that helps you take your career to the next level. You could see a financial adviser. You could buy books that inspire you to change your life. All these things are investments that could pay dividends of another kind.
Now, when I think about that $2 I saw on the street years ago, I think of all the things it could have done for me. And I challenge you to think about what a gold coin could do for you.
