It Starts With Gold^™

Money changes. Institutions change. Rules change. The enduring question is whether families understand what they own, how it is held, who controls it and what could affect their access to it when circumstances change.

On the Saturday before Black Monday in October 1987, Adrian C. Spitters wrote his Canadian Securities Course examination. The market collapse that followed sharpened a principle that would influence his thinking for decades: market value and financial security are not necessarily the same.

In 2000, Adrian moved out of dot-com and technology stocks into gold, precious metals and commodity-based pooled funds. He later realised that exposure to precious metals through an investment was not the same as taking physical ownership of the metals themselves. That distinction sharpened his questions about ownership, control and access.

Peter J. Merrick spent decades advising families about risk, succession and the stewardship of wealth. After sending Nobel laureate Harry Markowitz a thank-you letter and a copy of The King of Main Street, the two met for lunch. Their friendship and conversations deepened Peter’s thinking about diversification, risk and the different roles assets can play within a family’s financial life.

It Starts With Gold™ grew out of those experiences and the authors’ real Wednesday night conversations. The book draws on monetary and financial history, personal experience and speculative fiction to examine a fundamental question:

What does it really mean to own something?

Where history meets speculative fiction

In the book’s fictional 2050, Jackie.NY2618 cannot leave the New York district assigned to her at birth without permission. She calls this progress. Jackie finds it strange that people outside the city still own things, grow food and form families, choices her world has eliminated.

Strauss and Howe’s The Fourth Turning examines recurring periods of institutional and social disruption. Adrian and Peter see parallels between some of those historical patterns and changes taking place in monetary systems, technology and institutions today.

The 2050 storyline is deliberately speculative. Its purpose is not to predict a particular future, but to explore what could be lost when ownership, access and individual decision-making become increasingly dependent on systems outside the individual’s control.

The story gives readers a way to examine those questions before they become urgent.

Why it starts with gold

Gold is the starting point because its monetary history makes fundamental questions about ownership unusually easy to see.

Who owns the asset?
Who controls it?
Where is it held?
Does ownership depend on another party’s promise?
Can you access it when you need it?
What happens when ownership passes to someone else?

The same questions apply to businesses, land, investments, insurance, retirement assets and estates. Statement value alone cannot establish ownership security, accessibility or continuity.

Those questions ultimately extended far beyond precious metals and became part of the thinking behind Asset Security™: understanding not only what an asset is worth, but how it is owned, who controls it, how accessible it is and what happens to it when circumstances or generations change.

That is why It Starts With Gold™, but it doesn’t end there.

Questions Worth Asking About What You Own

• What gives money its value, and what could change its purchasing power?
• What do you own directly, and what depends on another party’s promise?
• Who controls the assets you depend on?
• Could your family access what it needs if circumstances changed?
• Who could make financial decisions if you could not?
• Does the next generation understand what you have built, how it is structured and why you own it?

The story ultimately asks a simple question:

What does your family truly control, and what would remain within reach if the rules changed?