I like the fact that you mentioned gold and silver. It’s solid and never goes down, and is a perfect place to protect your money from a dollar collapse. I personally have been engaged in some Forex trading recently, trying to hedge against the declining dollar.

With the health care now passing and this current administrations spending, I expect the dollar to continue to further deprecate which could lead to hyper inflation in the states. Not good, especially if you have money in the market.

I think a lot of people need to be educated about how to protect their money and investments, because 99% of people don’t realize that their money could become worthless real fast and most don’t even understand inflation and how it makes their purchasing power less and less.

The Internet has made investing so much more accessible than say 10 years ago. Tools like sharebuilder.com and zecco offer virtually free trading and automatic investments. No need to even think about it, just set it and forget it. I think it’s just as easy, if not easier to open one of these accounts and setup automatic fund transfers than to get some convoluted CD with lock out and maturation dates.

But yea CDs are a nice safe way to invest. I think if it is one of the ways you are diversifying your money it can be very useful. For the investor who wants to be conservative and not have to worry about where their money is it is a good play.