Commodities...What should I get?

    So lately I have been hearing a lot about precious metals investing.  You see a lot of Mike Maloney on YouTube and there are entire communities of people that "stack" precious metal bullion.  I like silver a lot because I think the market for it has been manipulated a lot and it is undervalued right now.  Gold is currently down to its 2010 value and is probably a good investment as well.  Ideally I would like to have a good amount of "hard assets" on hand and securely stored by the time I retire.  Not necessarily just precious metals, but a wide variety of different commodities.  I am a big proponent of spreading your wealth and investments around.  I don't like losing money, and I like to mitigate losses with gains in other areas.  With the current fiscal policy of printing money until the economy is fixed, I can only see growth for commodities of all kinds.  I plan on investing in land as well, as I get some savings together and I have paid off my debt.  The first goal is to get at least $1000 of cash on hand, before paying any debt off.  If I spend all my money paying off debt and I have an emergency I don't want to have to go back into debt out of desperation.  After that, half of my excess will go into investing in stocks, bonds, and commodities.  I am also planning on rolling some of my current 401k into an IRA so I can use that to invest in a wider range of investments than what is allowed by my strictly regulated 401k.  IRAs are nice because you can invest in almost anything and I strongly encourage all of you to open one and start investing for your future.  So many people age 20-30 have no plans for retirement and are not saving at all.  They are just simply getting by as well as they can and that habit is going to be very hard to break when you hit 40 and realize you need to have some money to survive after you retire.  Investing and saving are even more critical with the unstable economy we are currently facing as no one has a job that couldn't simply disappear. What do you do when you have no savings and no source of income?  I am not interested in owing anyone anything, especially the government. Back to commodities, I think having a 30 day supply of food is also essential to immediate security.  With the disasters in New York and New Orleans, people did not have access to food and water.  I am also on a coastline and am at some similar risks to storms and such.  The Philippines has just been ravaged by the worst storm in recorded history and people are dying because they do not have access to clean water.  Ideally, I would like to have 30 days of food and water on hand, $1000 cash, a small amount of silver and gold, 50 gallons of gas, and a small generator so I can have some source of electricity.  I'm setting the goal to have this in 6 months, and I will do my best to keep track of this goal as I acquire these assets.  If you have any suggestions for other things I should have, please feel free to comment!

- J

The Road to Freedom

   Good morning friends!  This blog is to journalize and document my journey to an early retirement and being financially free of debt. I spent the first 10 years of my adult life as most people do, enjoying the easy money that comes with credit cards, going to college and running up student loans, and working my butt off so I can live comfortably while still making all of the payments on my debt.  Luckily I havent gone too far in the hole financially when in comes to school as I have been going to community college to save money.  As it sits, I am about $25,000 in debt myselft and my wife has about $50,000 in student loans.  This includes all credit cards, store cards, cars and student loans.  Its hard to believe that we have gotten ourselves into $75,000 worth of debt in less than 10 years but we have.  To remedy this, I will be using a combination of techniques including Dave Ramsey's snowball.  In addition to paying off my debt I will be putting money into savings, IRAs, my  401k, commodities, food storage, and dividend producing stocks.  Eventually the goal will be to pay off all of the debt and set up multiple streams of income so I can retire early and travel the world with my wife.  I am currently 27, I have steady work, making around $55,000 a year and my wife makes around half of that.  I am setting the time for this goal at 13 years.  If I can be debt free and bringing in enough residual income to pay all the utilities, food and gas I will take a leave of absence and take my family to Europe for a vacation.  After that, I will continue to work and build up my investments for another 5 to 10 years and retire early.  It may seem like a long and impossible journey to some, but I feel like I am so close that I can taste it.  I dont want to owe anyone anything, and with the government, economy, and world going the way they are going, being financially free and independant is essential to survival.  Hopefully, all of us can become more financially educated and free through this project.  Thank you all for your support!

- J