Buffett has pointed out that purchasing a 10-year bond yielding 2 percent is similar to paying 50 times earnings for a business, a key difference being that the bond’s earnings can’t grow.
“Fixed-income investors worldwide — whether pension funds, insurance companies or retirees — face a bleak future,” he said.
Limit your wants
Buffett’s business partner and vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, Charlie Munger, has his own take for how best to cope with periods of high inflation: “One of the great defenses to being worried about inflation is not having a lot of silly needs in your life,” Munger told Berkshire shareholders back in 2004. “In other words, if you haven’t created a lot of artificial demand to drown in consumer goods, why, you have a considerable defense against the vicissitudes of life.”
To help with this, consider tracking your expenses through a budgeting app. This will help you understand how you’re currently spending your money and may help identify problematic spending bursts before they become a habit.
What about gold?
Notably, Buffett has shunned gold, an asset often thought of as being a great inflation hedge. Fans of gold are especially fearful of inflation’s impact on paper money, a concern Buffett shares. But as he noted in 2011: “If you own one ounce of gold for an eternity, you will still own one ounce at its end.” Instead, he prefers to own productive assets such as stocks, real estate or farmland that generate dividends, income and food for their owners.
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