Why should women reconsider their choice of physical gold as an investment vehicle?
Indian women are always known for buying gold jewelry, it is even seen as an investment by many. In fact, the practice of investing in gold is correct as the yellow metal always emerges as the savior for investors in the midst of market volatility. However, there are plenty of reasons for women to reconsider their stance on investing in physical gold. Investing in physical gold comes with challenges such as storage cost issues, impurities, etc.
There are also additional manufacturing costs that are added when buying gold jewelry that is lost when returning the jewelry for a new one. Check out all the reasons why women should stop investing in physical gold and look for better ways to invest in the yellow metal. The following are the reasons why women should not invest in gold jewelry.
Physical gold requires storage and security
Buying gold jewelery or physical gold not only requires money, but the purchased item must also be kept safe either in the bank or in a safety deposit box to avoid the risk of theft and robbery. Aside from the safety issue, buying gold in the form of jewelry requires the buyer to pay additional manufacturing costs that cannot be returned.
Impurities
There is another problem with the purity of the purchased yellow metal. If your purchased piece of jewelery does not have a BIS quality mark, it is difficult to determine whether the gold used is pure in nature or not. Therefore, if you sell it back to the jeweler over time, the gold jewelry will not generate the desired return.
Lack of earned interest
If the amount spent buying gold had been deposited in a bank or invested elsewhere, it would have yielded the same amount of interest. But the same is not the case with physical jewelry. The only benefit it brings is in the event of a rising gold price.
Liquidity
When it comes to gold jewelry, there are sentiments associated with gold. It never remains just an investment tool and becomes an emotional asset to the person or family. Added emotional value in a jewel makes it difficult to trade when people need money.
Apart from the following drawbacks of buying physical gold, better alternatives to investing in the precious metal will surely convince you to leave the conventional way of investing in gold and try some new ways.
Gold ETFs
Buying Gold Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) allows investors to purchase the metal at real-time price without any hassle. Gold ETFs are the mutual funds that track the domestic price of physical gold. The invested money is used by these mutual funds to buy gold bullion. Gold ETFs are publicly traded and allow investors to buy and sell Gold ETF units on the same day.
Digital gold
Customers can also explore the option of buying ‘digital gold’ using payment applications such as Paytm, PhonePe and Google Pay. Digital gold purchase allows users to buy gold from Re 1. These payment applications have partnered with MMTC – PAMP (a joint venture between public sector MMTC and Swiss company PAMP SA) or SafeGold to sell gold.
Sovereign gold bonds
Sovereign Gold Bonds are one of the best and safest ways to invest in god. These bonds are issued by the RBI and represent grams of physical gold. People can buy SGBs from banks, post offices, Stock Holding Corporation of India and from authorized stock exchanges of India. The minimum investment amount in SGB is one gram.