“I’m not rich enough”

Every so often the same conversation comes around. I speak with someone who has done well, exceptionally well, with a portfolio built over a working life. We talk through holding a portion of it in gold, in a private vault outside the country, and at some point they say a version of the same thing, “Isn’t this really for the very rich?”

I pause there. The person saying it is comfortably better off than most people they pass in a day, yet they have decided that wealthy always means someone a little richer than themselves. The instinct feels like humility, and it keeps them from claiming a tool already well within reach. Because the people who use it say nothing, discretion being the whole point, you never hear that someone in your own position has already done the same.

Who it is for

Holding a portion of your wealth in gold, in a private vault abroad, is for anyone with something worth keeping safe. The idea that it belongs only to the very rich is mistaken, and the way in is far easier than it appears.

The one for whom it matters most is the person whose life’s work is all they have, the money that sends children to school, funds a retirement, carries a family, and in time becomes a legacy. It is the head start handed to children and grandchildren who will never know the years of work behind it. A larger fortune can take a blow and carry on unchanged; for someone in this position, the same percentage cuts past any surplus into the very things the money was meant to secure. If anyone should want a portion of it beyond the reach of the one who sets the rules on money, it is them. It is you.

You are imagining the wrong cost

Much of the hesitation rests on a picture involving private jets and minimums you could never meet. The reality is that it is much simpler than opening an investment account. The entry point is far lower than most assume, the minimum purchase is two ounces of gold, a threshold surprisingly small once you hear it. Storing allocated gold in a secure vault costs about the same each year as the fees you already pay to hold your assets where they sit now. Setting it up takes about an hour.

Run it with your own number. Take your liquid net worth, the part you could move without selling a house or a business. The research on how gold behaves in a portfolio has long supported an allocation to it;¹ even a small one, a toe in the water, is where many people start, building up as their understanding of the risks grows. Set whatever figure you choose against the minimum of two ounces, and most clear that floor with room to spare.

So the barrier is a story. Someone who has built this kind of wealth can afford a holding that costs less to keep than the fees on the rest of the portfolio, so money was never the obstacle. The story is the personal one that says people like me do not do things like this, and it is keeping you exposed.

“I’m not rich enough” … sounds like modesty when it is avoidance.

The bracket is in your head

The decision about what percentage of your wealth to hold this way is a real one, worth thinking through with care. The decision about whether you are “rich enough” to consider it at all is a feeling wearing the costume of a fact. Strip the costume off and the question becomes simple. Do you have wealth that would hurt to lose, and is any of it beyond the reach of a single government? If the first answer is yes and the second is no, you are exactly the person this was built for.

If some part of you has been waiting to feel wealthy enough, ask whether “rich enough” was ever the real reason. Usually something deeper is at work. It takes familiar shapes, the discomfort of acting when doing nothing feels easier, and the easy faith that things will go on as they always have. Another is the sense that there is no rush, that you will deal with it when the danger is obvious, which is the one moment it is already too late. “I’m not rich enough” is the most comfortable of these, because it sounds like modesty when it is avoidance. Name the real reason, and the decision gets a great deal simpler. Many set a private benchmark for “wealthy” years ago and never revised it, even as their savings grew well past it. If you suspect that describes you, it most likely does. I can walk you through what this looks like for someone in your position; you may be surprised how far it is from the world you imagined, and how close it is to one you could arrange this month.

Footnotes

1. Independent research on gold’s place in a portfolio clusters in the 10% to 20% range. BIS Working Paper 906 (Zulaica, 2020); Van Vliet & Lohre, “The Golden Rule of Investing” (2023); WisdomTree, “Rethinking the Golden Allocation”; In Gold We Trust (Incrementum). The full case is in How much gold? on this site. ↩