
Originally Posted by
Potato
Sure there's risk involved. The risk is that you use money that isn't yours to buy something you hope will go up in value. If that something goes down in value (or even goes up but at less than the interest rate on the loan), you may have trouble coming up with the money to cover the loan. Is there a better way to invest in physical gold? Yes: don't borrow money to do it.
Is it a good idea to use a LoC to leverage into gold? Well, that depends. If you live in a world where there is no faith in "fiat money" then yes, borrow as much as you can to buy "hard" assets like gold, guns, and canned goods. The debt doesn't mean anything in that world anyway, it's just meaningless paper. Go nuts, and take advantage of those poor suckers who believe in using a common medium of exchange. If you live in the real world, where people have to eventually pay back their debt or be faced with bankruptcy (and/or broken kneecaps, depending on the lender), then it's not such a great idea to borrow money to pile into an asset that's just come off a 10-year bull run. The question I guess you need to ask is: your own beliefs aside, do the banks, loan sharks, enforcers, cops, lawyers, and judges in your area have faith in fiat money? Or somewhat more seriously, do you expect your lump of metal to appreciate by more than the hit in interest and transaction fees?
There's no tax benefit -- you can't write off the interest like you could were you to borrow and invest it in something that produces or has a reasonable expectation of producing income.