From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - The Gold Standard: Protecting Your Financial Future With Precious Metals

Episode Date: December 28, 2023

As inflation persists and trust in the ‘dollar’ falters, more investors are becoming curious about buying precious metals. Managing Partner of St. Joseph Partners Drew Mason joins to discuss his company's mission of bringing precious metals into everyone's home, and explains the benefit of owning physical gold.   Drew lays out the need for owning gold and silver as the value of the dollar lessens, shares statistics on how gold prices have grown exponentially since the 1970s, and explains why owning physical assets can protect your family in times of economic turmoil.  Follow Sean & Rachel on Twitter: @SeanDuffyWI & @RCamposDuffy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey everyone, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast. She's my partner in life. She's also my wife, Rachel Campos Duffy. Sean, it's great to be back. This is our first podcast since Christmas. Yes. And boy, we had an amazing Christmas here at the Duffy House.

Every single one of our kids were home with their significant others, all the little kids. Then we had my brother and my sister and their families come. It's just been a nonstop family fest here at the jeffy household um but wait so wait so much so that um i'm like hey rachel we're gonna go to our podcast and she's like okay i'll get ready and she's drinking coffee making some breakfast yeah everyone's still upstairs and she comes down for the podcast and i'm like but you're in your pajamas i'm still in my pajamas and i said you know what if you're not just listening to us, you're actually watching. You'll see Rachel in her pajamas for the podcast.

This is a first ever and bowl. I just came down. I'm like, that's a bold move. This is what I love about Christmas, especially that period of time between Christmas and New Year's where, you know, it's sort of like the super, super busyness of Christmas is over. And so you're just like sort of luxuriating in the Christmas spirit. This week, we're going to do an episode on just how to keep it alive more in your home.

And some of the things that, some of the traditions that we've done in the Christmas season, not the Advent season, which is the four weeks leading up to Christmas, but the actual traditional Christmas season. You guys remember the 12 days of Christmas, you know, the Christmas hero.

Exactly. There's a feast day. Us Catholic, we have a feast day for everything. There is a feast day from St. Stephen all the way through all the different day, the feast of the Holy Family, all the way down to the feast of the Epiphany, which is like a second Christmas for us.

We're rolling into the new year here, Sean. And I've been reflecting a lot on just how the last year went before we move into the new year here, Sean, and I've been reflecting a lot on just how the last year went before we move into the new year, the things that we've been doing differently, the things we've been talking about a lot. You talk a lot about, you're a bit of a prepper, just admit it, a bit of a prepper. You talk a lot about preparing and being prepared just in case for this family, which I think is really your job as a man, as a husband, as a father. And you talk a lot about our assets and what little we have.

What do we do with it? And one of the things you've talked about is gold. Because you've been really concerned about the currency. So we're $33 trillion in debt. And again, I think I'm not giving, we're not giving anyone investment advice. We're just talking about what we've done. And we have a retirement account. We do that. But with some extra money, I've been like, well, what do we do? And I was like, I think we should buy gold. Literally, my concern was, well, how do you buy gold? How do you trust someone to buy gold?

Because I had no idea. And I have other questions about what do you do once you have gold? Totally. But you used to serve on a bank board. And I talked to the CEO of the bank. I'm like, I want to buy gold. What do I do? And he's like, well, listen, I bought gold.

And I know this guy. He's a great Catholic man. And he's trustworthy. And reach out to them, St. Joseph's partners. And I did. And I was nervous. I had to wire them money. And I'm like, if I wire money, do I give my gold?

I was nervous. Gold. I was nervous. It was a little stressful because I'd never done it before. And through the process of wiring money, I actually got my gold. I've made several orders for gold and silver. But I got to know the founder of St. Joseph's Partners. Now there's seven principals of the company. I got to know them well and I've trusted them. And so I thought, you know what,

as we come to the new year, it'd be great to have a conversation about what role gold has maybe in someone's planning and preparation for what might be coming in 2024 or beyond, especially, again, with $33 trillion in debt. So let's bring in Drew Mason. He is the founder and now one of the principals of St. Joseph's Partners. Drew, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. We appreciate you being here with us between this great Christmas and New Year as a podcast on what I think is an important topic, which is gold, silver, and basically just precious metals. Welcome. Praised be Jesus. Merry Christmas. Thank you so much for having me. So Drew, when Sean said, I want to buy gold, I don't want to talk about why you have to have somebody that you trust, because I think that's important. As he said, he was wearing money

and I was stressed out about it too. But I've been thinking, okay, so maybe I'm getting too far ahead of myself, but here was my concern. When Sean said, I want to buy gold, I want to diversify. I thought, okay, presuming that, you know, I think there's a lot of volatility out there for the reason Sean mentioned and others.

I think, frankly, that in the next year and a half, there's going to be a lot of political and economic volatility. Probably something, things we've never even thought about. Probably the most volatility, I think, in our lifetime. But should I need to use my gold?

What do I do? I mean, is my grocery store going to take gold? Like, I'm, that's what concerns me about going into. So the practicality of what. Yeah, like, okay, so something bad happens and now I have gold. What do I do with it? Great question, Rachel. And the reality is gold is very simple. Anyone who tries to make it complicated either doesn't understand it themselves or they're trying to make you dependent on them because gold is simply money. It's a currency that no central banker can destroy, no policyholder can ruin.

And so you talk about, Rachel, the potential volatility we're going to see in the years ahead. What is so wonderful about gold is that gold has already seen every possible potential point of stress in our history. Wars, insurrections, currency failures, horrible governments. And in every one of those- Depressions. Depressions, for sure. Every one of those cases, gold has succeeded in preserving the wealth of its owners. So that's why we allocate to it. When you invest, you either invest to make a lot of money or you invest to be secure. And you can do both different portions of your portfolio.

If you're worried about just protecting what you've made in your lifetime, gold is an asset that has few peers of any over 5,000 years that have done exactly what it's intended to do to preserve the wealth. Now, you bring up the very practical point. All right. So if there is a currency crisis, which history says is coming, because as Sean said, our debts, 33 trillion are unpayable. What do you do with it? History again tells us, give us approximately three days after this recognition of a currency crisis, and everyone, whether you're in Watts or Beverly Hills

or wherever you are, will remember in this country that gold and silver are real money. Because think about it, if you're a butcher or you're selling flowers or whatever you're selling, you want to sell those goods, especially if they're perishable like fruits. But there comes a time where history says, again, this has happened 500 occasions, those vendors don't want your paper money because they see that paper money is losing value so quickly. What good is it? So then the question becomes, well, what can I transact in that is of value? Now you can barter with that butcher. You can bring him some shoes or something else. But at some point, he's going to say, I don't want any more shoes. Thank you. Even if you make the nicest shoes in

the world. But what he will want is a currency that will preserve value. And that's what gold and silver are. Silver, especially for smaller ticket items for day-to-day transactions like the supermarket, gold for larger items. Now, what we're talking about, too, is exactly what the founders of the United States of America put in place. They wired into the Constitution saying they didn't put us on a gold standard. Think about how noble our founders money so that when you're the working class, you're paid your wage for that day in silver, the working class can know as long as they have silver, they'll have a currency that'll preserve wealth and they can take it to wherever they want to go and buy goods and services and it'll be accepted. So that's what history says is coming. I can't promise you or the audience anything, but what we can say is, in some instances, even better than a promise is just precedent. We have all these case studies, and it's always worked. So the odds are good, it's going to play out this way the next 50 years. And oh, by the

way, what do we see the most powerful institutions in the world, the most plugged in institutions doing? Namely, the world's central banks. So these bankers are the ones who are printing the money and they are concerned for themselves about what they're doing. They're not necessarily warning the working class. But we saw in 2022 record buying by the central banks who were selling dollar assets. record buying by the central banks who were selling dollar assets. They sold their T-bills, their T-bonds and bought gold. 2023 is setting up to be another record. We're on track for a record year. So they are saying with the probabilities in place, they want to have some goal. This isn't Armageddon's tomorrow. This is just saying, know your history,

know your probabilities, and have some allocation to goal. Because if I'm wrong, if what I am saying to your audience is 100% wrong, and we don't need goal, that means everything else is in great shape. It means Biden has figured out what no statesman was ever able to accomplish in 5,000 years. He's figured out how to conquer our debts, how to conquer all the other issues we have. But just in case he can't do that, he can't do what no one else has ever figured out how to do, then you have some gold, you have some silver,

and it's the hedge that history says is necessary. So Drew, that's a really good point. And so again, I look at what's happening in the world. I look at what's happening with central banks, especially our central bank, and it makes me really nervous. And history would dictate that when you do that to your currency, when you print and you borrow and you spend, they make promises that you can't keep. There's no way to pay off your debt. Really bad things happen. And that's why I've convinced Rachel, and she's gone along with it that we should hedge and buy gold. But again,

and silver, and I would love it if I'm like, I never had to use this. This never was a problem for me because as you mentioned, our politicians figured it out. And maybe I just get to give, you know, my kids gold or silver. I needed it in my retirement. But let's say for instance, and we talked about this at one point in one of our conversations, Drew, I'm like, you know what? I have too much gold or you know what? I want to buy a house or I need money. I have gold. Can I actually resell it? Can I call you up, Drew, and go, hey, I've got 10 pieces of one ounce gold coins. Can you sell that for me? Can I get back into cash from gold? I know it's easy to go from cash to gold. Can I go from gold to cash? Yes. Again, a very practical, great question you're asking there. And tying in to what you

said in the beginning of our podcast about the concerns of who you work with. Every dealer can say they're good, they're trustworthy. There's so much clickbait on the internet where your phone will say the best dealer, this best dealer. We were blessed to unknowingly go through an intense survey where one of the country's largest gold custodians for IRAs looked at the dozens of dealers that they were working with, and they highlighted our work for our integrity and the value that we're providing to clients, because there are a lot of shenanigans, a lot of charlatans in gold. How do you know you're moving in a good direction? I think the term of art here is there's a lot of scumbags in gold. I think that's what we've come to conclude. There you go. There you go. That's the term of art. So you know you're

moving in a good direction, however, if the price of gold that you're buying is close to the spot price. If you hear somebody talking about limited edition gold, collector's gold, proof gold, run the other way. And so what we have done to try and be as transparent as possible is not only will we buy back all the gold we've sold to our clients, but we'll buy their gold no matter where they bought it from. We don't care. And we advertise on our website on about 85% now or up to of our units that we sell, our SKUs, we advertise our buyback price too. So you'll know, do you want to turn around and sell this right away? This is what you'll get for it. And gold, physical gold, the audience should know, is more liquid on a daily basis than the Dow Jones Industrial

Average. So it is extremely liquid. And to your point, let's say, okay, I want to buy a house. Well, why would you go into gold if you want to buy a house in a few years? Because the dollar has been being decimated. Since we came off the gold standard as a country. The dollar has lost over 90% of its purchasing power. Gold is up over 50x. So there are two currencies that they had dramatically different performances for their investors. And because America's balance sheet is worse now than it ever has been, one would expect that the depreciation of purchasing power dollar is likely going to intensify. So that is why you would want to have some gold and silver, even if you're planning on

buying a house. Let me give you a case study as well. I was going to quickly just ask you, because on the point of just, again, there are scammers. I think, again, that's why you have to be really cautious if you choose to do this, dealing with reputable people. And again, you mentioned there's this special once-in-a-lifetime coin, and it's a lot of money above the spot price of gold. You'll see right now, I think, as we're shooting this, gold is at $2,090, I think. And they want to charge a significant premium. You say run away from that, but if you're looking at buying gold or silver, what should the premium be? What extra do I have to

pay above the spot price of gold to be in a reasonable range to go, I'm getting a fair deal? So if you're buying, it partly depends on the quantity, right? Because there's a physical cost to ship it to people. But even if you're thinking a relatively small amount, you should be within 10% of the spot price in most occasions. Now, realize that the mint... Wait, so Drew, if I buy one coin for the spot price is like $2,000, just for easy numbers, I may be paying a $200 premium on that one coin. But if I buy 50 grand worth of gold, that will come down? That seems, is that what we're talking about? All right.

So let's get a little bit more granular here. Okay. let's get a little bit more granular here. If you were to buy, say, a one-tenth ounce gold coin, the US Mint charges about three times as much of a premium for that as it does a one-ounce coin. So if you're talking about a one-tenth ounce or a very small coin, the premiums are going to be higher. You just said a minute ago here, let's talk about a one-ounce. So if you're buying a one-ounce coin from the US Mint, you're probably looking at about five or 6%. If you're buying a one ounce coin from the US, then you're just buying a couple, you're probably looking at about five or 6%. If you're buying more of those, you're probably down about the 4% level. Okay. That's when you buy it. Now, when you sell that coin, we will pay you

over the spot price for your gold as well. So currently I I think we're paying about 2.5% over spot for a gold eagle, over spot when you sell it back to us. So you're paying for the mint manufacturer's charge. If you're going to buy a coin from Canada, for example, you probably would save a couple of percent off of when we buy from the Canadian bit. So you're in the ballpark there because understand the key is not that I pay 4% or 5% over it. The key is that you have the allocation to gold in a form that's easily recognizable, easily proven to be real so that when you go to sell it, people will recognize whoever you want to sell it to, whether it's the butcher or your car dealer, that you have real gold. And what we're buying this for isn't gold going from $2,000 to $2,500.

History tells us we're buying this because there is the potential that gold is going many multiples from here. Because as the dollar loses its purchasing power, price of real assets rise, go up. They go up. Now, just to wrap up one thing that you just, because you brought up the case of the house and how that would work. So we did a study and we can send the details to anybody who would like. So we did a study and we can send the details to anybody who would like. We looked at the price of a median home in 1971, because that was when we came off the gold standard.

And we looked at how many ounces it would have taken to buy the median home in America with gold. And I believe I could be a little bit off, but I believe we were like 300 to 400 ounces of gold, right? Is what you would exchange to buy that home. Well, fast forward to today, and I want to say the price of homes is up, you know, multiples, multiples of there. But it only takes about a third as much gold to buy that home. So where it took me, if I had 300 ounces saved before, I had to give the landlord, the seller of the home, all of my gold to buy that home in 71.

Today, if I had taken those 300 ounces of gold and I just saved them, today it takes about 100 ounces of gold. So I give the realtor who's selling me the home 100 of the ounces of gold, and I still have approximately 200 left. So I can go and buy another home or buy a private company or a corporate office park, whatever it is you want to buy. So that's our expectation is that we're not going to die owning all this gold that you are allocating to today. We're buying this gold as a bridge to get our wealth intact into the future, to the next few years. Because there's so many moving pieces. When the fog lifts and we have granularity as to what the next financial currency may be in the United States or what the situation will be, history suggests your goal will have preserved your wealth,

and you'll then be able to take some of it and do whatever you want with it. Whereas the tragic mistake that we see Americans making today at the behest of their financial advisors is they're saving their wealth in dollars, whether it's T-bills, CDs, bonds. in dollars, whether it's T-bills, CDs, bonds. Justification they're told is that the dollar's been rock steady for many, many years. It's been the envy of the world. Well, that is, that has been true. The times are very different now. We see these other nations back. And so what history suggests is going to happen is that people who have a million dollars, whatever the number is, saved in the bank, they're still going to be able to go and take out that million dollars, but it's only going to have the purchasing power of a small fraction

of that. Whereas if they had allocated a portion of gold, we expect, according to history, that it will have preserved the purchasing power much better. We'll have more of this conversation after this. The world of business moves fast. Stay on top of it with the Fox Business Rundown. Listen to the Fox Business Rundown every Monday and Friday at foxbusinesspodcasts.com or wherever you download your favorite podcasts. So I think I had talked to my sister before this podcast.

We were talking about what are the questions we have around this topic. And so the first was you kind of talked a little bit about it, but I think you should expand more. Like, obviously, you're seeing Joseph's partners, but other people might go, how do I make sure? How do I know that the person I'm buying gold from is legit? Like, what are the what are the things to look for? So that's one thing. And then once I get the gold, it gets sent to me, you know, in the mail.

In discreet packaging, we've had some set. Yeah, it comes in this weird, it comes in a package and I think it's FedEx, right? Is it FedExed? It can be, Rachel. And so I get this packaging, which nerve-wracking because you know you think about all these Amazon people that are stealing packages from people's fortunes and so that makes me nervous and then what do I have to do in my house to prepare like I need to have

a safe what what do you recommend to people when one what are the rules for finding somebody trustworthy? And two, where do I store it? How do I keep it? What should I do in my house before receiving this goal? So good questions again, Rachel. And some of the things you're drilling into are really best detailed one-on-one with individuals rather than to a broad audience. But we'll touch on them. So with regards to finding a reputable dealer, look at the transparency they have on their website. What are they offering to pay for it? Look at the pricing that you'll have. We feel super blessed with the review that I referenced that we received. It's almost impossible for individuals to get that kind of due diligence on a dealer that's had thousands

of their trades investigated and they were concluded to have been working in their best interests. I would almost say, be careful of people who pay a lot for advertising. And again, if you're hearing about collector's items or rare gold or truth gold, that's a really concerning sign. Because you just want to be buying gold as money to protect yourself in the future. So I think if you go with that framework, that'll help you. Those, that framework that'll help you. Now, when it comes to actually owning the gold, many of our customers do choose to have it stored in insured vaults. So these are not banks. The last place we would tell you to put your gold is in a safety deposit box. Those are not audited. They're not insured. The banks have very junior level security. And even the nation's largest banks are telling customers, don't store gold and silver here.

So you have to know there's something concerning about that. But there are privately owned and operated vaults outside the banking system whose sole job is to store and insure metals for customers. So many of our customers choose to do that. You don't have to take delivery at home. If you do want to, as you were alluding to, for most small value items, meaning like, I shouldn't say small value, under $100,000, under $50,000, it depends on the person. You're buying one or two coins. We will ship it in the mail to you. Why don't you have to worry about

the Amazon Forge theft situation? Because it sends signature guarantee. So it is insured up until the time you sign for it. So you don't leave 100 grand of gold on my porch or 20 grand of gold or 10 grand of gold on my porch. I actually have to sign for you have to give it you have to deliver it to me we don't we don't leave 500 in your porch we don't leave any on your porch you have to support and it is discreet doesn't say you just

bought gold um so i can only say to you rachel that every day there's billions of dollars of gold flying through the system. Yeah. And what is it? What percentage of your customers keep their gold in their house? Do you guess? If you guessed me. I would say maybe about a quarter of them, Rachel. Maybe about three quarters.

It's just a preference. And the rest will use these private storage places. Yes, a private facility. And it comes down to, and again, we have such a great team, Rachel, and I mean that sincerely. I love my partners, my literal equity partners in our business and our team, and we get great feedback on them. They'll talk with you about your situation are you concerned about your neighborhood that's a big plus right that's a big one yeah elderly it is harder to move big amounts of metal around there's all different circumstances that are specific to an individual and we can talk you through that give you ideas about what may be best for you we never come and say this is what you need to do we give you ideas about what may be best for you. We never come and say, this is what you need to do. We give you options and just, and we sound, you know,

we talk through them and see what resonates the best with you. And we encourage our customers to pray, pray, pray to the Holy Spirit for guides. If what I'm telling you is wrong, I want the Holy Spirit to tell you that so we don't hurt you in any way. And ask the Spirit to just behind you right the world tells you oh you don't want you want to keep god in a compartment you want to ask for wisdom for guidance on all these details yeah and you'll you'll have peace about it about how you're led

and we think you'll be extremely pleased in the years that we believe this decision allocating to gold may be the most important financial investing decision you'll make in the next decade because of what history says, right? There's nothing else in finance. You can open up a track record and say 100% occurrence, right? It's always like two thirds, 51%. The problem is just off the charts that we're going to have problems with our dollars and that wealth's going to transition to gold. So you really, you want to be very careful before you accept someone else's recommendation not to have a significant allocation to this from your family, because history also tells us this is going to impact future generations. What are you going to be able to leave to your heirs? So that's how we talk through these issues

with clients, Richard. Drew, it's an important point. And just to be clear, like I wouldn't, we've, Rachel and I had to make a decision on where we keep our gold. We decided our home is not the right place for it we have to send it somewhere else which is which is which is in the way you did it right like you didn't you could take it and we send it right back out you know a week later it's easy for people to do if they've bought gold before other places we can help them get it out of their homes for safety and get it to what if there's an emergency you have to get it but you just hopefully not far away and you can go grab it.

But, Drew, I mean, I... Yeah, go ahead. Answer that question. There are some regional... There is some regionality with the vaults. We don't work with a large number of them. We work with the hands. And the ones we suggest our clients use are ones where we keep our own battle as a firm. As of today, let's say the emergency comes up and tomorrow, Rachel,

you have to have money to buy a house. You have to have a down payment. You would just call us if we have it in the vaults, tell us you want to sell it. We'll get written authorization from you. We lock in today and it's done. And we're wiring you funds within T plus, they call it T plus two. If it's early enough in the day, it can be T plus one. Now, if it's an emergency and you want your goal, we can also say, I want my goal, whether it's in an IRA or it's in a taxable account, you can say, I want my goal and we ship it to you and let them know insured service or depending on where you are, you can also pick it up from these vaults. So those are the options we have now. Now, let's just say, Rachel, that you're talking about

absolute worst case emergency. History suggests to us that that's not going to happen tonight. We're going to see if all of society is disintegrating completely, we're going to see if all of society is disintegrating completely. We're going to see this increasing incrementally. And when the point occurs for each individual where you say, okay, I'm now more concerned about being able to get to my goal than I am the risk of having it here in my presence. When that moment comes and you say, send me my goal, or you can take delivery of it, it just has to do with the individual's circumstances, how comfortable they are today, and when they become concerned down the road. Interesting. And Drew, I want to be clear. I got to know you because I bought gold from you. I have concerns that we've talked a little bit. Rachel and I have talked about this issue on podcasts a lot. And what we've been surprised about, Drew, is, and I preface whenever I talk about it,

I'm like, I know I'm crazy. I know I've kind of lost my mind on what I see happening, but I don't think I'm wrong. And so I've, as a family, tried to take precautions. And as we're talking about gold, I've talked about that in the past on the podcast but also i i'm a big fan of of crypto i'm trying to diversify outside of the current system because again i don't i what more promises a little bit of real estate i mean people can do different things and we talked about we'd like to get a farm that's a four we did a

podcast on a on a farm it's like a four the new 401k is a farm, but diversifying. But my point was a lot of people interest in the, there's this subconscious feeling that things aren't right, that things are going astray, whether it's the border or crime, but the money side of things and the promises and that migrants will get $5,000 a migrant coming into the country, all really bizarre, bizarre things that have made people make decisions to protect themselves. Well, even just the debt. I mean, Sean sat on the Financial Services Committee when he was in Congress. He followed a lot what was happening, you know, on a micro level, but especially on a macro level in terms of the

debt. And I mean, we talk about all the time, Drew, Sean was doing speeches, sort of raising the, you know, 15 trillion. Yeah, we were at 14 to 15 trillion. We're at way past double that now. And it doesn't seem like there's any end in sight. And then on my perspective, you know, I studied Latin American history. And so I know what happens when currencies do collapse. Insulation does happen and ruin people's countries and families for generations. And so you put that together, what he knows about our US government and how bad things have gotten just over the last 10 years and then, and how much worse they're getting right now. And then just my own understanding of having lived and studied, lived in and studied Latin America. To me, this

looks very, very ominous. And so, yeah, there's a lot of different ways. Now, one of the questions. Can I just make one, just maybe a pre-h-answer question? I just want to be clear. We have retirements in the stock market. We do that as well. I'm trying to look for something outside of that as well to go, hey, how else can I better protect myself? How else can we protect? So I haven't gone complete prepper. I'm not off the grid. I just don't have everything in gold and crypto. What I've done is I do have our investments in the stock market, but then I also have made other plays to go, hey, I want to protect ourselves with gold and silver that I got from Drew and then also with crypto. And then we are talking about a farm. said to me, am I a candidate for somebody who should be investing in this way? And so this is a young lady who makes probably under $100,000 a year. So is that something that young people

should be looking at, or is this a play for a different stage of life? Absolutely. You brought up so many good points there. Hopefully I can hit a few of these. I want to first talk about Sean's point where he says, I'm not really crazy, but I'm interested in protecting my wealth. I want the audience to understand, if someone tells you, you are crazy or you're a conspiracy theorist because you're going to protect your wealth at goal, it should be an alarm bell to to you a complete sign to discount whatever they are telling let me make it announced oh no drew but i i tell them all i i know i'm crazy i know i'm doing all this stuff and when i tell people drew they're like we're doing things as well like the number of people who are planning

for something bad is remarkable it's not talked about that much, but so many people. And it's not what, it's just not the conversation that people were having five, 10 years ago. Yes. I'm sorry. It's just off the charts what's happening. Yes. Even Drew, I'll tell you this,

you know, I've sort of sheepishly brought up, hey, I'm thinking about, because we have this, we have a podcast that came out recently called, Sean mentioned it, that the farm was the new 401k. And I would occasionally, sheepishly among people who I'm friends with, but not super close with,

had brought up the idea of like, yeah, I think I might want to have a farm. I couldn't believe how many of the people that I talked to, who by the way, were kind of urban people. Like we're not talking about my rural friends in rural Wisconsin. Urban people have said, oh, yeah, either we have something in Kentucky or Tennessee or we're in the middle of looking into it and buying something. So I know that it sounds crazy, but the amount of people who are talking about moving to a red state, buying, you know, a farm, getting a little bit of gold, going into crypto.

I mean, it's unbelievable to me. So I just am shocked that these are the conversations we're having today that I never had these conversations seven years ago. So fortunately, there is an awakening. There's a wisdom that is flowing out there. So just to frame it for your audience, because today, less than 1% of Americans have physical goal. So let me make an analogy. You're parents, and I come to you, and I'm a doctor. I say, hey, I got a treatment I want to use on your child. We've got 500 case studies. And every child, it's failed in every case. It's failed every time. All right, do you want to go ahead and do this treatment with me now? That is what financial advisors are doing with their clients when they're telling them, just stay in dollars, stay in T-bills, stay in T-bonds. There's zero precedent for this working out. So I think people feel this extremist idea of gold because there's such pressure from certain entities to not let people discuss this. They don't want them to think about it because as soon as you start thinking about it, you realize this makes all the sense in the

world. It has all the precedent. This is what we need to do. Job number one of any portfolio of construction is diversification. And nothing diversifies that we're aware of like gold. Meaning, we have the data, 50 years gold's been trading, it's inversely correlated to stocks, bonds, and real estate. That means when those assets trade lower, historically gold thrives. That's what you want for a component in your portfolio. Now, talking about crypto, if you want to put it in a portfolio, great. It could do so well. I also see what I think is a very disingenuous discussion from financial advisors who say to their clients, do you want gold or crypto? They're totally different assets. It's

like me saying, do you want crypto or do you want a home or do you want stocks or do you want dollars? They're different assets. Crypto can do fabulously or it may not. So when you allocate to it, and I say that because we don't have any precedent of crypto working for a hundred years, right? So when you allocate to crypto, what we suggest to our clients is just know it may work out great, but it may not. Make sure you have an appropriately sized allocation for your risk tolerance. Gold, on the other hand, it's never failed. So depending on your risk tolerance, you want to have that allocation. Now, you also brought up a really good point, Sean, back to when you were serving the country publicly and we were talking about our debts.

What we also hear from financial advisors is, yeah, they've been talking about the debt for more than 10 years and nothing's happened. Why do you think something's going to happen moving forward? Well, let's be crystal clear on a point that America needs to understand. In 2008, when the markets were bludgeoned, the outlook our government knew was really bad for bonds, for real estate, and for stocks. So what our government did was they initiated this program that's always been called money printing, but they came up with a new name for it called quantitative easing or QE. Because just like when they put votes through and it's not what it's labeled as, they put this through. And what was QE? Audience, this is so important to understand because they spent $10 trillion on QE. And what was the point of it? The point was to elevate the prices of bonds way above where the free markets

would price. So let's just unpack that for a minute. The government stepped into what are supposed to be free markets and they destroyed price discovery. They destroyed fair value because they came in with $10 trillion and bought these bonds. Why did they want to buy the bonds? Well, there's many reasons. It lowers the interest expense for the US government with all of our debts, but it spills over because bonds are supposed to be the early warning indicator in the capital markets that there's a problem that investors need to be alert to. So when they buy those bonds, it short circuits the warning signal and yields of the bonds come lower.

That means, audience, when you go out to buy a home or real estate, the mortgage rates are lower. So that means when mortgage rates are artificially low, real estate prices rise artificially high. And the same thing flows through to stocks. When rates are low, cost of borrowing for these companies is lower, and the multiples extend. So QE was designed to elevate the price of bonds and by extension stocks and real estate too. And it succeeded. When you look in the rear view mirror at the last 10 years of asset prices realized, you're looking at how well stocks, bonds, real estate did cause the government intervention in these markets.

Why haven't they taken the QE out? They know they can't because the markets will collapse if they do. That's why they left it in there. Originally, they said they were going to take it out in 2010. They know they can't. Now, there's a flip side to this because again, audience, nothing we're talking about is far from getting. We're talking about one area of life the u.s financial currency going through a massive change so you need to be prepared for it you can act like a deer in headlights and not be prepared there's such bright tomorrows coming and the other side of qe the unintended consequence of qe is that gold is ridiculously cheap right now. Yes, we're at 2,000 in my opinion, right? I can't guarantee anything, but think about this audience. Yes, gold's at 2,000. That's

at a nominal all-time high relative to the dollar, right? But if gold is money, it's a surrogate or another option for dollars. The volume of dollars has exploded with the money printing that's gone on so tremendously that even though gold has risen from 35 an ounce to 2,000, it's still cheaper per dollar printed than it was in 1971. So I'm saying gold relative to the money supply is as cheap as it has been. So audience, you need to understand this is not about Armageddon. This is not about selling everything and only borrowing gold. It's having that, as you mentioned, as a key component to a diversified portfolio. And it's recognizing the fact that gold hasn't exploded in value so

far is good. You are essentially getting a government subsidy to step up and buy gold at these prices today. Otherwise, the alarm bells that Sean was sending when he was serving the country would have got off. QE has delayed this. And audience, that's a beautiful thing for us in America, because it gives your family the chance to go out now and to prepare for these transitions that are coming so that you can afford a nicer home. You can afford better things for your children, your grandchildren. You can, if you hadn't had this opportunity to reallocate. Okay, so to answer my question, if you're making between, you know,

$25,000 and $100,000, you're a young person. $25,000, but if you're making, you know, $50,000 to $125,000, can you come in and buy a little bit of gold? Should you do that? Do you need a little more money to call St. Joseph's Partners and buy some gold?

The answer is no matter how much money you have saved, it's your nest egg. And we would say, yes, you want some gold because the same macro factors are going to pressure the billionaire's stock exposure to his stocks are going to pressure somebody who's got $50,000 worth of stocks, right? It's the same pressure. So we would say, yes, thousand dollars worth of stocks right it's the same pressure so we would say yes no matter what your how much you have saved the answer is yes if you only have a little bit then you may want to only go with silver right that's what we see happening around the world so right now if you're in india and places in asia the youth right the 20 year olds the 30 year olds are saying what could we save it and the grandparents grandparents are telling them, no matter what our governments

have done, if you save in gold and silver, it works. But grandpa, I can't afford gold. Then buy silver. Buy silver. So the premium is a little higher on silver. What the spot price is $23, $24. You're paying $4, I think, roughly on that to get your silver. I could be wrong on that. But Drew, I want to go back to your QE point and make another point here because we talked about this a lot and a lot of Americans never heard of quantitative easing. What is QE that you mentioned?

But again, the government stepped in, printed money. I asked actually Ben Bernanke, who is the chair of the Federal Reserve at the time. I'm like, you're just printing money. He's like, no, we're creating reserves. I'm like, that's printing money. It's the same thing. That's a lie.

He lied to the American people. Of course he lied. And so the point is they printed money and they came into the market and bought U.S. treasuries and supply and demand. If they weren't there, the government wasn't there to buy those bonds with the money they printed, the prices would have gone up. You'd have to pay more interest on those bonds to get people to buy them. But because the government stepped in and they were a big buyer of our bond with printed money, it drove the price down, which is why people could get a mortgage at less than 3%

for their home. It was all fake. And now we're dealing with the consequences. You're right. They've talked about unwinding this balance sheet that they've created of trillions of dollars of newly printed money. And they're having a really hard time doing it in the markets, throw temper tantrums when they try to get off this fake stimulus. That's important. So just wanted to say that a different way, Drew, but I also want, so there's a story that's going on about Paul Pelosi, Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi's husband. He's a remarkable investor. We all think he gets insider information, but he bought the Nvidia stock, Nvidia stock.

By the way, can I just say, Drew, I don't know if you know this, but there's, there were TikTok accounts that were created where basically they just followed all these people started making money and they started talking about on TikTok because all they did was look at what he was buying and they said, we'll buy everything that Nancy Pelosi's husband does. We're going to do. And they made money. They did really, really, really well. So he has these he has these magical predictive abilities to know he does better than what to invest in. He's exploded in value because people have said Nvidia is the chip to be used for artificial intelligence, for AI. And so over the last year, the price last September, a year ago, the price was 131 a share. Today, it's almost

500 a share, right? So it's exploded in value. And I bring that up because someone who invested in a Nvidia stock would have made a huge return on their investment. Gold is not that kind of return. I'm not looking at getting rich and getting massive returns off of gold. At least I'm not. You can tell me if I'm wrong. I'm looking at just preserving what I have. Preserving.

I'm not going to lose it through inflation. I'm not going to lose it through a devalue dollar. I'm preserving, not making huge money off it, but I get to preserve my wealth and I must guarantee that preservation because as you've mentioned over millennia, gold has made it through every crisis the world has thrown at it and it's still here today. So just I want to be clear, you're not getting rich off it. You're preserving to it. Am I right on that, Drew? It's certainly not a get rich quick scheme. And exactly as you said, Sean, we want to always say to people, the number one reason to buy gold is defense. It's wealth preservation. It has succeeded at that. But let me just fine tune a little bit of an idea here

for people. So again, let's say you have Nvidia stock and you have crypto in your portfolio. And of course you have real estate for your home. We're not saying you sell all that, but like, let's say right now you don't have any gold, but you have just a tiny portion of it. What investors want to be comfortable with, we have to be comfortable with our own decisions and how we're set up and our own risk tolerances. So if you're owning Nvidia stock and you're sitting on these massive gates, whether it's Apple or whatever the case is, right? You just have to make sure you're comfortable that you expect that it's going to continue to do very well in the future. If you're concerned, then it'll be a time to take some chips off the table there, no pun intended, to cash it in and to allocate it to

something else. Maybe at this time, you also are saying, with all these debts, I just want to be a little bit more defense. Historically, the way people get defensive is just to buy US dollar assets, T-bills, CDs, bonds, right? To say, okay, I'm going to diversify my currency. I'm going to have some gold currency in there. It's not selling everything. And let's think about, again, if we're all, if there's nothing to worry about, then you still have some of your stocks.

You still have your crypto. They're going to do great. And gold will probably lag. Though it's not going to zero, again, it's appreciated at 7% a year since it began trading freely. That's a pretty respectable return for an asset that you buy for safety. And it will be a great component within your portfolio. Now, having said that, Sean, it would be equally quick to say that what we are really on the threshold of, in my opinion, and I'm going to cite one of our

generation's most famous investors supporting what I'm going to tell you, is a paradigm shift. And today, Americans have been taught, largely by financial advisors, that if you take a little bit of risk, you're only going to get a little bit of return. If they got a lot of risk, get a lot of return, right? Ironically, I would submit that at this moment in time, even though gold has proven itself to be an asset without compare for safety, I think we are entering into this moment where gold has significant upside too. Can't promise that the only reason to buy it, and we're buying for defense, but I think it does. Why? Let's look at the data again, because again, and we're buying for defense, but I think it does. Why?

Let's look at the data again, because again, audience, finance is supposed to be about the data, not just someone's opinion, right? So we went back and we looked at the most inflationary years in American history since gold began trading freely. Why should that be important? The media talks about 2% inflation, but I can't find a family that lives on the same planet as these economists, right? Whether you look at food or whatever the case is of the last 10 years, I think inflation's grown 2%. It's ridiculous. And history tells us

when a country's debts become huge, inflation's going to be around. It's going to be a real problem. So maybe we should be thinking about what if inflation remains? So we looked at and we ranked all the years by their inflation level in history, in American history since gold started trading for you. And we focused on the top quintile, which is the top 20% of those years. And what we found is that during the most inflationary years, gold actually outperformed stocks by 5X, not 5%, by five times. And it outperformed bonds by 20 times. So America can't promise you anything. What I can say to you is those are really good probabilities, percentages, history to be aware of, where I don't think you have to think you're going into goal and it's just going to be at 2,020 years.

It may be, but history is telling us it's probably going to be a good bit higher. And again, this is what was so brilliant about our founders. I think you both, like me, are patriots. We love America. We love what our founders set up here. And they knew if investors saved in gold and silver, first of all, the citizens would have power, not the government, right? Because the way it stands now, because we've destroyed the financial system that our founders set up, is when we want to go to war, when we want to do whatever, the government just prints the money and they do it. And the construct that America was founded under and that we are coming back to in global finance, where gold is center stage, gold is one,

then the government's going to have to come to the people for permission to do what it wants to do. What a beautiful future. And so we are also saying to you as patriots, you will have more influence in the future with your allocations to gold and silver. The age old saying, he who has the gold makes the rules, wasn't made up for nothing. There's a reason for that. So our expectation is that gold's going to preserve your wealth. As we go through these financial transitions, it's going to be worth a lot more than $2,000 an ounce. And by having an allocation to it, you're going to be in a position to provide for your family, to leave a legacy for your heirs, to do things that today you probably can't do, and that will make many bright tomorrows for you as we take back this country on every level

and restore its tremendous promise. You know, Drew, I think that's a great pitch. And I think the purpose that, again, I talk about this a lot, the purpose of this podcast is to get people to think. Think about what you're doing. Think about what's right for you and your family. This is actually what we've done. And I feel better about it when I have. It's only a piece of the puzzle, though. Right.

What we talk about all the time is as we enter into this period of uncertainty and we are convinced that the next year and a half is going to be completely unpredictable on all kinds of fronts political economic um but there's a spiritual component to it as well and so what we have been talking about is bigger than our finances it the finances is a piece of it, but it's bigger. It's how do we fortify our family spiritually through family bond? How are we a better unit, a better team?

I had my daughter was home for Christmas and her and her husband were going, well, maybe we want to live a little closer. I was like, yeah. And just starting to bring your chickens closer, right? Your family closer, your adult children closer, starting to fortify the family so that spiritually, mentally, emotionally, and yes, financially, you are a better unit. You're a better team. You can put resources together better and be stronger for whatever happens into the future. Amen. Amen.

You know, evil is so terrified that Americans will begin to speak the name of Jesus and to pray together. Why? Because that ushers in the spirit of wisdom. Scripture is clear about what we're talking about is the basis for wisdom on all levels of life, including finance. The Bible tells us, God says, the gold is mine and the silver is mine. He makes that direct connection, which is astounding. And in Revelation, the Bible tells us, I counsel you to buy gold. We find in the fire so you will grow in wealth.

So all the wisdom we need to protect your family, to decide what's best for your health, every area of our lives is right there. We just have to ask. He's not going to force his way into our lives. And again, look at our country. Look at how we were founded and the incredible precedent our founders made. All the fasting they did, the praying, and how much wisdom we had any minister or any rabbi to lead it. And when you look in scripture, when evil is threatening God's believers, whenever they fasted, they had victory every single time. And we said, you know, boy, we've really just forgotten the importance

of fasting, which by the way, is not a coincidence. In the 1960s, Protestant Bibles and the Catholic Bibles were whitewashed. And they took down in two specific places Jesus' teaching that, hey, Christians, if evil is strong and you pray, you're going to lose every time. Christians, you're going to lose every time if you don't add fasting to your prayer when evil is strong. So I could begin to encourage everyone enough to fast with us for the restoration of America on all levels, our safety, honest elections, secure borders, to restore us to even greater prominence than we had before, which I really believe is possible to happen, as crazy as that may sound. I encourage you, just pray. Pray together. If it feels awkward, just try it. Pick up your Bible. Start reading the Gospels and

the Scriptures. Just pray a little bit. And if you have any big decisions to make, I encourage you to fast. Join us. The first century Christians said, we are obligated to fast on Wednesdays and Fridays. The way they did it was so easy. Bread and water, as much bread as you want, as much water as you want. But when God made the universe and he made the law of gravity, he made all these laws, for whatever reason, he made this law about conquering evil. And we have to add fasting in order to have power over evil. And then when we do extraordinary things, C12, just a closing comment about this, this Protestant group that did some incredible research, and they found that in World War II, London, as you remember, was just being destroyed, right?

They were literally on their last thread. It was game over. And these Brits got together and they said, you know, we forgot how important it is to fast. And they started fasting. We don't know if it was a hundred of them, a thousand of them. They got together and started fasting. And the most amazing thing happened. Adolf Hitler, who had built this cabinet of brilliant war leaders, who had deferred to them when every kennel overruled their objections, and he withdrew from London, went to Russia, Britain was spared, and we had a turning point in the war. Obviously, I can't wait to improve that that came from that small group of people fasting,

but it's a more modern example. I would say to your audience, whatever your concerns are about your children, decisions they're making about spouses or careers, try fasting with us, and I think you'll be so happy to see how evil just won't go off of you, just won't go off of you. But what a blessing that is today.

What a wonderful message. Wonderful message, I want to go off of you for what a blessing that is today. What a wonderful message. Wonderful message, especially in this Christmas season. Listen, Drew, I want to thank you for being a friend and an advisor for Rachel and Sean here. Thank you for joining us at the kitchen table. If you want to find Drew and his partners. Can we pray for the audience really quickly, please, before we part? Would that be okay? For sure.

Absolutely. Heavenly Father, Yahweh, and how about we praise you in Christ's child, baby Jesus, King Jesus. We praise you, Holy Spirit. We praise you. We thank you for the incredible generosity and blessings you've poured out on this country, United States of America, founded in your image, on your commandments. Thank you for all the blessings you've poured out on this country, United States of America, founded in your image, on your commandments. Thank you for all the blessings you've poured out on our lives.

Father, I ask you in the sweet name of Jesus, pour out your Holy Spirit upon everyone watching here. Bless their families, bless their children, their loved ones, protect them from evil. Give them the wisdom to make whatever decisions are best for them in every area of their lives. We pray this in the sweet name of Jesus. Amen and amen. Amen. God is Son,

Holy Spirit. Amen. Thank you, Drew. Drew Mason, St. Joseph Partners, thank you for joining us today. We're so grateful that you made time for us. Thank you. Thank you so much. God bless. God bless America. We'll have more of this conversation after this. I said this numerous times, but I was nervous. And you can tell he's a calming presence and a smart guy. And to come on and kind of unpack gold and silver for us. I want to be clear for the second time, we have retirement accounts,

we invest in the stock market. This is just a space that, clear, for the second time, we have retirement accounts, we invest in the stock market. This is just a space that, again, because of my concern, I thought, you know what, we should do some gold, we should do some silver, we should do crypto to diversify ourselves. And to your point, Rachel, a lot of people have talked about this, who are thinking about what's happening in government and how they want to protect their families. Yeah. And I think that was an important point that he made and that you made,

you made as well, which is that, and I think this is where a lot of people are. They're not even thinking about how do I make a lot of money? They're like, how do I just protect what I have now? And maybe, and have something that can grow slowly into the future, but,

but that won't lose value in all this volatility that I think we are right in predicting is what we're likely to see in the next year and a half. So I think it's a great discussion. I think it's just part of this bigger message. And I think we're going to be rolling out as we move into the new year, which is, you know, we talked about, you know, is the farm the new 401k? We've talked about a lot of health issues, you know, we talked about, you know, is the farm the new 401k? We've talked about a lot of health issues, you know, because one of the things that happened over COVID, John, is that we realized, especially those who weren't taking care of themselves physically, you know, with their good eating and exercise, they became more susceptible to COVID and ultimately

to so many of the mandates coming out of the government. So it's very liberating and empowering to be healthy, to take care of yourself. So taking care of yourself financially, taking care of yourself physically, taking care of yourself emotionally and spiritually, all of this is about fortifying your family so you're prepared to face whatever it is. Obviously, we hope nothing happens, but I don't think that's going to happen. I just don't understand how this is all going to end in this next election. It just feels very volatile. It's unsettling.

It's unsettling. We all feel it. It's unsettling. We all feel it. And so this is it. We're going to be moving into the new year, taking on a lot of topics and conversations about fortifying your family. And one of the topics we're going to discuss coming into the new year is learning how to do stuff.

I usually use a different word than stuff. Yeah. But a lot of us don't know how to do anything. Yeah. And that's part of getting independence. You should know how to do anything. Yeah, and that's part of getting independent. And fortifying is you should know how to do a lot of different things that our grandparents knew how to do.

And I've started the process. I'm going to share with you what I've done in my trials and tribulations and how I'm planning to expand that out. And again, we should all take that effort to be,

again, more self-reliant. We can take care of ourselves. So again, I want to thank Drew Mason from St. Joseph's Partners for joining us on the podcast. I appreciate his insight. And I want to wish you all a Merry Christmas. We don't

want to forget, again, there's 12 days of Christmas that started up. We're still Christmas spirit here at the Steffi House. All decorations are up. We're still in full force in effect. Still having people over. We're still, you know, in that Christmas hospitality spirit. And by the way, if you're going to take your decorations

down, don't. Keep them up. It's still Christmas. It's still Christmas until January 6th. Keep it going until January 6th. All right, everybody. Thank you for joining us at the Kitchen Table. If you like our podcast, you can rate, review, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can always find us at foxnewspodcast.com. Please subscribe. You get a notice every time we drop, which is Wednesday,

Thursday, and Friday. And until next time, we'll see you all later. Merry Christmas, everyone. Listen ad-free with a Fox News Podcast plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. And Amazon Prime members can listen to the show ad-free on the Amazon Music app.