Do austrians’ suggest any different approaches in their personal finance advice?
Stay out of debt.
Buy gold/silver.
If you expected inflation wouldn’t you want debt? Or do you mean inflation-adjusted debt?
Don’t keep your savings in fiat currency.
What difference does it make? Not owing people money is a good thing.
If there is just going to be inflation (meaning wages increase almost as fast as prices), and you can lock in a fixed interest rate, debt would probably not be much of a problem. However, this will be a very rare occurrence. Debt with a variable interest rate and inflation will not get you anything. Debt with stagflation will be bad for you. Debt with deflation will hurt you as well. Not so much as if it is a variable interest rate as opposed to a fixed interest rate. So given that there are five possibilities, with only one good possibility, taking on debt seems highly risky to me.
If you have savings to cover your debt, then it is not such a big deal.
Yeah. There’s Jim Rogers, Marc Faber, Doug Casey, Bill Bonner, Peter Schiff. But remember, someone who is Austrian can give advice but that advice is not “Austrian.”
Not always.
You are right and I was waiting for such a response. I’m more or less in favor of commercial debt then I am consumer debt. Commercial debt should be debt that is obtained in order to help the company either get into business or keep certain parts of the business operational, while also generating a profit. I don’t find consumer debt to be as useful and therefor find most of the consumer debt that we see people in today to be very wasteful. It takes away a lot of credit that could have been offered to productive businesses.
“if I were truly a hardcore advocate of Austrian investing, my only assets would be a shotgun and a bag of gold.”
Yup. See: The role of the capitalist in a market economy.
I don’t understand the logic behind your response. Suppose I am debt free now and expect inflation next week. I should run out and put myself into debt before next weeks inflation?
I retract my statement. What do you mean by “good thing”?
If you were correct, and the loans did not adjust for such inflation, then you would be purchasing products at a discounted price. You would be repaying your debtors borrowed money at inflated rates, yet in real rates you would win and debtors would lose. It is a zero sum game, but good for you