Let’s approach the question using movie tickets.
A movie ticket in Washington, DC, costs about $10.00.
We can flip that around to answer the question.
10 dollars costs one movie ticket. Or, the price of 10 dollars is one movie ticket.
How much did 10 dollars cost twenty years ago, in movie tickets?
Twenty years ago, one movie ticket cost about $5.00.
So 10 dollars cost two movie tickets.
This means during the past twenty years, the value of 10 dollars fell fifty percent.
If you owned 10 stock shares, and the value fell fifty percent, what would you do?
You’d sell the shares.
You can also sell your dollars. Simply buy something with them.
You wouldn’t want to buy movie tickets because once the show time passes, the tickets would be worthless.
Instead, buy something that’s highly “saleable,†meaning something you can sell:
- in any amount
- at any time
- at the current market rate.
So that excludes that new HD TV you’ve considering. Once you buy the TV, you couldn’t sell it quick, without a substantial loss.
So buy something you can sell quickly and easily: company stock, silver coins, platinum coins, mutual fund shares, collectible comic books…whatever you think is highly saleable and will retain value during the next twenty years.
If you owned dollars during the past twenty years, you lost a lot of wealth.
Make the next twenty years different.
So are you wondering why your dollars fell in value?