In my post from December 2009, I recommended loading up on silver and gold.  Silver was around $16 per ounce, gold was pushing $1,200.  The Dow Jones was around 10,000.  Now silver is over $30, gold is approaching $1,700, and the Dow is over 12,000.

Oh how I wish I bought more … silver doubled, gold added 50%, and the Dow posted a measly 20% increase.

Both then and now, people still turn on CNN Money and MSNBC and follow the ridiculous advice of the talking heads to buy equities, municipal bonds, and money market funds.  They don’t realize that we’re in a phase of the cycle, during which commodities is king.  This doesn’t mean they will never be overvalued.  It just means that they have not been overvalued in the 2000′s, and they are certainly not overvalued now.

Here’s the good news — people still view precious metals and to some degree equities investing as a lunatic survivalist-hoarder fringe game.  People still don’t hold anything real in their retirement accounts.  People still have no idea how and why to buy physical gold and silver.  This means that there’s still time to jump in and get your hands on some Eagles, Maple Leaves, or, if you are lucky, Koalas, and Kookaburras.

I just placed an order for a couple of rolls of Canadian Mint Maple Leaves because that’s literally the only thing that’s available.  Everyone is out of the Eagles, and I don’t like private mint rounds.  While I can’t predict the future, I know I’ve been right every time I recommended to buy on a dip, so I am sticking to my guns and continuing to invest in precious metals.

How will I know when to sell?  When precious metals investing becomes common knowledge.  When Edward Jones offers IRA silver bullion inside their retirement accounts.  When MSNBC talking heads tell everyone to buy gold and silver.

So I have to be honest … I have no credit cards. I don’t even have an emergency one. My wife and I made a firm decision several years ago to close all of our cards, take our licks on the credit reports, and just move on paying cash for everything. Well, paying with our debit card for everything.

Recently, though, I needed to quickly get a card to move some money from an old student loan that somehow started to accumulate interest. I guess it’s the beauty of not staying on top of the paperwork, or having spam filters enabled, or whatever the hell happened. They just decided to jack up my rate after “contacting me several times”, and I have no time to fight them.

So first I checked out Jon on My Money Blog. He frequently posts about great credit card and balance transfer deals. Then I went to Compare The Market in order to compare credit cards and credit card offers they have available.

Compare The Market allows you to do some pretty nifty comparisons of pretty much anything … from 0% balance transfer offers to home insurance.  The site is clean, fast, and laid out well.  Give them a click!