Gold or Education

A lot of people point to their house or car when asked what their biggest asset is. Many like to buy gold when they are bearish about other investment alternatives. In the event that we ever needed actual gold as money again, our problems would be pretty big. In my view you can only use gold as a way to offset short term noise in your 'paper money' value (because gold can go up when other assets go down - when people get scared) or as an insurance premium. You probably aren't going to be worth more if your gold was a really good investment - it likely means everything else is worth very little. It is not really a productive asset. The same goes for your house and car. The only way they will go up in value is if more people want them, not because they have produced more.

In general I think education is undervalued as an investment. Your lifetime ability to generate an income is likely worth a lot more than your house or car. It is very difficult to take away from you as long as you are alive (i.e. it is great insurance). Starting from scratch - having invested in Social Intelligence (learning languages, communication, empathy, networking) or Practical Intelligence (building and making stuff) will be incredibly handy. If it is knowledge of art, music, nature - you may be a cultural billionaire. Someone who can get through their perfect day having spent very little.

There is a lot of talk of Continual Professional Development where those in the workplace try to keep their skills up or improve. We can definitely spend more time on Continual Personal Development. In both cases, if everything was taken away from me except one asset - I for one would choose education over gold. In the case that things are actually getting better and the golden insurance isn't necessary, you get constant dividends from education.

And things have a habit of getting better.