HLS: The original poster sounded like he had a ton of cash sitting around and wanted to know if it is a good idea to invest in gold or foreign assets. I think, for his situation, becoming debt free and living a stress free life is preferable to doing something risky (I consider both gold & foreign currency speculation high risk for most piggingtonians. Unless you can lose a million $ and not worry a bit, gold & currency won’t help you). Your suggestion is much better for someone who can manage risk & leverage credit responsibly. Buying a house with mortgage and getting a lower yield on a low risk investment (like a CD) isn’t attractive to me. Renting out a home is also unattractive due to all the hassles of being a retail landlord.
Ideally, I would invest as much as I can in a diversified pool of global funds. Large cap multinationals should be relatively low risk if well diversified.
