The pool of silver investors is extremely small. Most investors who understand sound money, Austrian Economics, and the need for fiscal responsibility flock first to gold.

That’s where institutional money goes first. To fund managers, owning silver makes sense, but ONLY AFTER they truly internalize and affirm that precious metals are on the move, since silver is leveraged to gold.

It’s not a popular trade at all, though. Gold and silver are pieces of metal, so the incentive to own them over real estate or stocks and bonds is miniscule. Once you own gold, nothing happens. You wait and wait, but it doesn’t change, nor yield any return.

But, once every few years, its price goes on such a rally that it more than makes up for all the dead years. Its price today is $1,440, which is nearly 6-times what it was in the year 2000. The stock market indices have not gone up 500% in the same time, so even though it doesn’t yield anything, it STILL beat them!

In June 2000, I was sixteen years old; in the three preceding years, between the ages of 13 and 16, I was coaching basketball to 1^st graders, babysitting, painting decks, and distributing flyers on the weekends, which all helped me to save $8,000, the seed capital I used to build my financial fortress.

Due to my father’s bankruptcies in 1997, 2006, and 2010, I had no plan B to ever inherit a family business or to ask my parents for help. My mind was focused on nothing but the next step, my upcoming move. When you can’t afford to make silly mistakes, your guard is up and the focus level is akin to a fighter pilot in the midst of a 6-G maneuver. There’s no room for error.

My teen friends said that I was obsessed, reading stock market books instead of playing sports and hanging out. They laughed at my rigorous savings addiction, putting aside nearly 80% of what I made, but once I understood compounding, I felt it was a cardinal sin to spend cash that I knew could be worth 4-times the amount just 10-13 years later, when I was 27-30 years old.

It dawned on me that most multi-millionaires and billionaires are self-made and that they follow a strict set of principles, whether consciously or unconsciously, which manifested in their enormous success. The fact that most riches are not inherited gave me confidence. It finally sunk in when I was 22, when billionaire told me straight up, “You will either spend your life accomplishing your own goals, or you’ll get hired to accomplish someone else’s.”

That same year (2006), I spent countless hours learning about the monetary system and became fully aware that rarely does anyone get rich by investing alone, but that people become wealthier and financially independent by WISELY allocating capital into cash flowing assets, after they’ve developed skills that others deem valuable in professions that are in demand and built careers or businesses of their own.

Aged 23 in 2007, I spent 3 hours a day reading self-development books for a whole year. My father’s bankruptcy a year earlier – which caused him to experience a heart attack, depression, and loss of joy – really drove me to understand the psyche. While people my age were concerned with their grades at the university, I couldn’t afford learning information that was abundantly distributed worldwide to 23-year-olds. I searched for exceptional data and found it in those books that I read habitually until present day.

One of those books showed how people go from struggling to prospering, almost at the flick of an internal switch – from broke in year (X) to wealthy in year (X+7). I saw that people become successful in all countries, no matter where you live, what the tax structure is, how strong the currency is, or who’s in control of the government. Except for a few general limitations, wealth is attainable to anyone, but it’s the most brutal of all achievements – becoming wealthy is hard because it requires a mental effort like no other — it’s like setting a goal to become world-champion; the commitment is 100% or nothing.

I was attending a cash flow conference a month ago and someone asked the speaker how long it would take him to achieve success similar to his. The speaker replied that it took him 8 years to change his habits from destructive to constructive and 7 more years to put his plan of action into play and reach his first million. He said he first learned to stop gossiping and stop blaming everybody for his woes, from family members to governments and religions. Later, he said that it took him 3 years to come to terms with the fact that NO ONE would do it for him and that he must take full control and accountability for his results.

The last thing he said astounded the person who asked the question. He told him that out of the 1,000 people in attendance, there were probably 100 people similarly broke as he was. 90% of those will look at taxes and say they’re too high. They will say it’s impossible to succeed with the rising cost of insurance, of rents, or of quality organic foods, but that 10% of them will go out and EARN more, so that these costs will mean nothing to them.

He finished by telling the person asking the question to come to him after the presentation and give him (the speaker) his number, so that he could call him in 2029 and see if he’s still complaining about corruption, injustice, and other circumstances in the world – or – if he made it happen by doing every act in an excellent manner, raising his worth, so that his compensation was such that he doesn’t even know what things cost anymore.

Normally, speakers aren’t that direct and aggressive with the audience, with the people asking the questions, but this speaker changed the entire atmosphere in the room, by cutting to the chase.

We learned from him that it is futile to search for any sense of fairness, as he revealed that his personal story included overcoming cancer and poverty. Each starting point is different, so there can never be fairness, in that regard.

There’s an immense bull market coming in precious metals. Not everyone who learns about it will make a fortune. Some will choose not to invest; among those who understand the importance of the moment, the struggle will be to make sure that enough money is exposed to the rise in prices, so that the gains mean something.

The only way to make this work for you is to earn more ACTIVE MONEY. 2029 will surely come, no matter what we do, so let’s make sure we write the script of wealth and act the part.