The saddest short story is six words long

There is a famous story, six words long, often pinned on Hemingway, though the dates make that unlikely; versions of it appeared in print as early as 1906, when he was a boy of six or seven, and his name attached to it only decades later.¹ “For sale, baby shoes, never worn.” A whole grief, not a syllable wasted. You supply the tragedy yourself, which is why it stays with you.

Inaction has its own story, also six words long, and we have all lived it in some form. Knowledge gained, delay, too late, regret. It is softer than the baby shoes, and far more common. We see it coming. We understand it. Then, for reasons that feel sensible at the time, we wait, until waiting is all that remains.

Almost always, the knowledge was already there. The investor who rode a losing position too far down knew. The one who meant to draw up the will, to make the call, to say the words, to move before it grew hard, knew. The loss lives in the gap between knowing and doing. That gap is part of being human, and the list of things we let fall into it is long. The aim is to notice it in time, before this joins the list.

Keep this in view while the choice is still open and unhurried. One decision of this kind runs through everything here, whether to move a portion of your wealth into gold, held in your own name and outside the financial system. The research supports a meaningful allocation to gold in a portfolio,² so the real question is only where you hold it. Should money turn programmable and restrictive, preparing leaves you well positioned whatever happens, protected if it comes, diversified and reallocated if it does not. This asks little of you, an afternoon of paperwork for a safeguard that holds. When a small voice tells you there is no rush, it is worth questioning. The calmest time to act is before you feel you must.

If you already know where your money is held and what could put it at risk, you do not need more convincing. The only thing left is to act on the decision you have been putting off, while it is still yours to make. If you do not yet know, or an instinct tells you something is off, that is reason enough to read on and decide for yourself, before this becomes one more thing seen and let pass.

The six words this began with are ones we each end up writing alone. We share the pattern; only you can write where your story ends. Reading this site gives you the first two words, knowledge gained. Moving while it is still early adds the next two, action taken. The last two words are yours, because what it means to you is different for everyone. Knowledge gained, action taken, ______, ______.

The six-word story is popularly misattributed to Ernest Hemingway; versions appeared in print as early as 1906 (Hemingway was born in 1899), and the attribution to him dates only to the late 1980s. Source: Quote Investigator, “For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn,” https://quoteinvestigator.com/2013/01/28/baby-shoes/ (tracing the form to the Ironwood News Record, 1906). ↩
Independent research supports a gold allocation in the 10% to 20% range (Bank for International Settlements, “What share for gold?”, WP 906, 2020, https://www.bis.org/publ/work906.htm); the full set of studies is set out in How much gold? on this site. ↩

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