Monetary Metals

09/01/2026

Most articles about a company award are written by the company. This one was written by a board member who opened with a warning to read it skeptically.

Jim Brown, who writes as HardmoneyJim, has served on the Monetary Metals board since 2018. He is a shareholder. He is a client earning yield on his own gold. He puts all of that in the first sentence, and asks that you weigh everything that follows against it.

What follows is his case for why a spot on the Inc. 5000 is worth more than a skim. Monetary Metals placed at No. 408 this year, up from 677 last year, and No. 34 among financial services companies. The list ranks companies on revenue growth from 2022 to 2025. Not valuation, not funding, not press. Money paid by clients.

Jim has watched the firm get built from the inside for eight years. His read on the number is that it reflects something a press release cannot say about itself: people are lining up for the service, and investing their metal in it rather than just talking about it.

He is careful to close the way he opened. None of it is investment advice. He is not your advisor. Do your own work and size accordingly.

It is a rare thing to see a director write about his own company with that much care. That is part of why it is worth reading.

Read here:

Monetary Metals reached No. 408 on the 2026 Inc. 5000 list. Jim Brown, manager of the Justice Brown Family Office, reveals what this means for gold owners.

09/01/2026

Does an umbrella policy actually cover more?

The name suggests it does. It doesn't.

An umbrella is excess coverage. It raises the limits on what your auto and home policies already cover, and it does not cover anything those policies exclude.

That distinction matters, because most people buy one believing they have closed the gaps rather than raised the ceiling.

It belongs in a comprehensive plan. It just isn't the plan.

08/28/2026

Why would you let your gold leave your safe?

It's a fair question, and the instinct to hold it yourself is a reasonable one.

The case for the alternative is productivity. Gold sitting in a vault holds value. Gold at work earns on it.

That only matters if it comes back. Over twenty years, more than $14.5 billion financed, audited and verified, and never a lost ounce.

The gold goes to work. It still belongs to you.

08/28/2026

Most gold owners have accepted one objection as permanent: gold does not pay you anything. A bar in a vault produces no income. You pay storage. You wait.

Jim Brown, who writes as HardmoneyJim and has served on the Monetary Metals board since 2018, argues that objection is being answered, and he points to an unusual piece of evidence.

Monetary Metals was recently named to the Inc. 5000 for the second consecutive year, at No. 408 overall and No. 34 among financial services companies.

Last year it ranked 677. The list measures one thing: revenue growth over a three-year window. Moving up the list against the same pool means the growth accelerated, and it did so against a larger base.

Jim's point is what that growth is evidence of. The demand for gold leasing is coming from mints, refiners, and jewelers who need metal as working inventory and find leasing it a better deal than borrowing dollars. In his words, the demand is commercial, not ideological.

He also draws a line most people miss. Earning dollars on your gold reintroduces the currency risk you bought gold to escape. Earning gold on your gold is a different thing entirely. Your ounces grow, and you are still measuring in the unit you trust.

For most of recorded history, gold was finance. It was lent, borrowed, paid interest, and cleared trade. The idea that metal can only sit still is the recent development.

Jim discloses up front that he is a director, a shareholder, and a client earning yield on his own metal, and asks that you read with that in mind. The full piece is worth your time.

Read more on this here:

Monetary Metals reached No. 408 on the 2026 Inc. 5000 list. Jim Brown, manager of the Justice Brown Family Office, reveals what this means for gold owners.

08/26/2026

What do people get wrong about asset protection?

Usually this: I have insurance, I have an LLC, I'm covered.

But insurance only answers a specific named event, and it comes with a ceiling. Everything outside that definition, and everything past the limit, sits unprotected.

Insurance isn't the wrong tool. It's the first one.

For a smaller estate it may be the whole plan. For a larger one, it's where protection starts.

08/19/2026

What happens next at the Fed?

The next chapter may not be louder policy, it may be quieter. The expectation: less talk, more action behind the scenes. A narrower focus back to monetary policy, fewer dot plots, fewer governors in the media. The target for Fed funds likely holds.

The long end of the yield curve already moved on its own.

08/15/2026

Japan's bond market just sent a warning.

Cheap Japanese rates funded investors everywhere for decades. Now the curve is pricing in the end of deflation, and policy rates look hundreds of basis points too low.

When that funding source tightens, capital gets more expensive everywhere.

08/12/2026

You're told you've never been richer. So why can't you save a dime?

Half of US households cannot cover a surprise $1,000 expense, even as the official numbers say wealth is at record highs. Something does not add up.

Meanwhile about $34 trillion in gold just sits idle worldwide. It does not have to. Leased to the jewelers and refiners who actually use it, that gold can earn a yield, paid in gold, while you keep legal title and get it back plus more.

One asset that is finally pulling its weight.

08/05/2026

Your gold has been sitting idle this whole time, and it did not have to.

About $34 trillion of the world's gold just sits in vaults doing nothing. No yield, no work, nothing.

But gold has always had financial utility beyond just holding value. Jewelers, refiners, mints, and fabricators need physical gold to run their businesses, and they will pay to use yours.

That is the model. Your gold gets leased to those businesses, you keep legal title, and you get it back plus a yield, paid in gold. Averaging 3 to 4% a year, over 10+ years with no loss of client principal to date.

No storage costs eating into it either. The gold that used to just cost you money to hold can finally start earning instead.

08/04/2026

Payroll taxes quietly take the biggest bite out of working people's paychecks, before anything else in life even happens.

Social Security and Medicare taxes hit households under $168,000 a year the hardest, and combined they rival income tax as one of the government's biggest sources of revenue.

Wealthy earners often point to their income tax bill as proof of what they contribute, but that conveniently leaves F**A out of the conversation entirely.

It is a reminder of who the system asks the most from, and who has the least room to give.