This is your chance! The time you have been waiting for, but maybe not so certain about. The desk might be clear and everybody is admiring the presentation golden watch in its smart box. You might even see your retirement savings could be the largest figure of money you've seen in your life. It is a nice feeling but can also be scary one. Now more than any time you are in need of great investment counsel. Even if you're careful, you face fiscal risks at retirement time.

The Key Risks:

Longevity: the risk of outliving your investments is real.
Inflation: the unchangeable price rise in goods and services will eat up the buying power of your hard-earned savings.
Asset allocation: if you don't choose the right mix of investments, your portfolio could fail to grow.
Health care expense: you need a trustworthy source of money to cover rising health-care costs.
Withdrawal rate: if you take out too much money too soon, you are in trouble.

To be Steady In Your Retirement Investing:

Diversify
Safety Is Critical
Build Continued Growth.

Keeping these things in mind have you considered investing in gold?

1) DIVERSIFICATION
No matter if your method of investing is conservative, or aggressive, investing in gold plays a critical role in the diversification of your portfolio. The majority of experts suggest a gold holding of 5-10%.

2) Safety and Security
Like we excruciatingly learned from the NASDAQ crash, any stock, no matter how seductive it may seem, always has the chance to drop to zero. That won't ever happen with gold. Life is full of unpredictable events-hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorist attacks. Investing in gold is the perfect way to guard the base of your portfolio from an unpredictable future.

3) GROWTH
Of late, a longterm reader of an investment newsletter wrote: "I've been obeying your gold suggestions since December of 2001 and have made a boatload of cash. The ten gold stocks you suggest now, if held since that time, are up around 500% on average. Not too bad while physical gold is up around 70%, a seven to one ratio."

At this time, world gold demand outpaces global gold supply by 60-100% annually; as the mines cannot remove gold quickly enough to meet this demand. A shortage leads to higher prices. Noone can guarantee that any thing will persist forever, but in the short-term the gold prices will increase.

So what condition could your gold investments be in?

Just as you can diversify your overall portfolio, you should also diversify the gold segment of it. Gold investing takes 3 main forms:

1. Having physical gold-the most secure, "insurance" part of it. And the most thrilling aspect? When you grip gold in your hands for the first time, you appreciate why it has aroused such fervor throughout the ages!

2. Gold stock-investment in high quality gold mines. This is for the "growth" segment of your portfolio.

3. Gold derivatives - for those who are not risk-averse!

Some people may give you a bizarre look if you are talking of gold investment! There are good ideas floating around:

Gold offers no return. But it doesn't have to - gold keeps going up in value!
Central banks will sell off their gold. They have before and have recently realized it's not a wise policy.
The government could possibly confiscate gold. It's true that this occurred in 1933. But things have changed to such a large extent since then; the chances of this today are almost nil.

If others are uneasy about gold investing, then that's another reason for you to do it and do be successful at it! So that you can enjoy your retired years!

Summary:

The main factors of gold investment are:

To be mindful of your retirement with diversification, safety and growth. With these in mind, you would do wonderfully well to think about gold.

For more information on gold and gold investing visit The Gold Market.