I wrote this public page after speaking with my financial advisor in June of 2013. I later changed financial advisors.

In summary, my financial advisor suggested that I keep my emergency savings in the equivalent of a USD dollar account that matched 1-month US Treasury yields. As readers may notice from the title, ZIRP stands for Zero Interest Rate Policy. I theorized in 2013 after meeting with my financial advisor that this advice would not age well.

The below highlights the financial advisor's approach versus my chosen path. I'll note here that the purpose of this was for emergency savings, not medium or long term investment. Given that I have very different risk tolerances of risk than most people, I tend to hold a much different amount in monthly expenses than what most people do for emergency savings. Most financial advisors debate a minimum of three to six months of living expenses in emergency savings.

Because of the depth of financial crises (2000 and 2008) along with the massive amounts of layoffs I've seen throughout the 1990s, 2000s and so far up to 2013, I think three to six months of emergency savings is way too low. However, this is my own view and not standard advice.

Financial advisor's suggestion: save in 1-month US treasury equivalents.

My chosen path: use gold (GLD ETF); I purchased GLD at $134.43 per share.

2024 Update: My result with $1,000.00 set aside as an experiment to follow my financial advisor's advice resulted in $1,189.00 over a little over ten years, a change of 18.90%. My result following my chosen path resulted in GLD rising from $134.43 per share to $240.63 per share, a change of 79%.

• I recommend everyone I know personally to read this article by Kenneth Rogoff, especially noting his comparison of gold to short term debt.

Independent Comparison: As an independent comparison to both of the above financial instruments (1-month US Treasuries and the GLD ETF), the median home price in my area rose from $126,000 in June of 2013 to $225,000 in December of 2024, a change of 78.57%.

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ZIRP Theory