Common myths about buying gold – debunked

Gold has been a trusted store of value for thousands of years, its value is universally understood – yet many people hesitate to invest in it due to common misconceptions. If you’re considering adding gold to your financial strategy but feel unsure, let’s break down the biggest myths stopping people from buying gold and why it could be a smart choice for you.

Gold bars in a shopping cart

Gold has been a trusted store of value for thousands of years, its value is universally understood – yet many people hesitate to invest in it due to common misconceptions. If you’re considering adding gold to your financial strategy but feel unsure, let’s break down the biggest myths stopping people from getting started and why gold could be a smart choice for you.

“Buying gold is only for the ultra-wealthy.”

Many believe you need to buy entire gold bars or coins to invest in gold. In reality, platforms like TallyMoney allow you to own real gold in much smaller, accessible amounts (as little as £1), making it a great option for everyday savers looking to protect their money. Even a small amount of gold can help diversify your portfolio and act as a hedge against inflation. The key is starting where you’re comfortable and adding to your holdings over time.

“I need to store physical gold myself.”

The idea of buying gold can sometimes conjure images of vaults and safes filled with shiny bars. While some investors prefer to hold physical bullion themselves, modern solutions eliminate the need for home storage and the cost and security complications that can bring. With TallyMoney, your gold is LBMA (London Bullion Market Association) approved, securely stored in a Brinks vault and fully allocated to you, meaning you don’t have to worry about safes, insurance, or physical handling, or letting slip down the pub you’ve got a store of gold. Your gold is safely held in professional vaults, fully insured, giving you the peace of mind that it’s protected while still being instantly accessible whenever you need it.

“Gold is complicated to buy or sell.”

Historically, buying and selling gold involved working with dealers, navigating deliberately confusing and varying pricing structures and worrying about quality and authenticity. But today, platforms like TallyMoney make it as simple as using a regular bank account – you can buy, transfer, or even spend gold instantly through your TallyMoney app and TallyMoney debit Mastercard®. No need to worry about finding a buyer, what rates above/below market you’re getting, understanding market fluctuations, or handling paperwork. Gold ownership has never been more straightforward.

“Buying gold is outdated – modern investments are better.”

Stocks, real estate, and cryptocurrencies may dominate media headlines and other financial discussions, but gold remains one of the most stable assets in history. It’s boring – in a great way! Unlike stocks that depend on company performance or digital assets that are highly volatile, gold has consistently retained its purchasing power through economic crashes, inflation, political events and market turbulence. It is a tried-and-tested safe haven, always functional even when other markets become dysfunctional. The key to a strong financial strategy is balance and gold can play a cornerstone role in securing and growing your wealth.

“Gold prices are too volatile.”

Gold is a stable asset, but fiat currencies like pounds and dollars are constantly fluctuating in value as they’re not anchored to anything.  But if you look at the gold price in pounds or dollars, then gold prices do fluctuate in the short term, but gold continues to increase in value over the long-term relative to fiat currencies (e.g. pounds, euros). Since the year 2000, gold has, on average, increased in value by over 10%p.a. year on year when priced in fiat currency. Unlike fiat currency, which loses its purchasing power over time due to inflation, gold is independent of that system and has historically been a strong hedge against inflation, economic uncertainty and geopolitical risk. Instead of focusing on short term/daily price movements, savers should look at gold as a long-term safe and growing asset. Think of it as wealth insurance.

“Buying gold means hidden fees and tricky pricing.”

Many traditional gold providers have complex pricing structures with hidden commissions, varying exchange rates, storage fees, and other markups. This has led to concerns about whether buyers are truly getting a fair deal – and how would you know? TallyMoney operates with full transparency, ensuring that you always know exactly what you’re paying for. The rates are competitive, fair and clearly displayed, allowing you to make informed decisions without worrying about hidden costs or middlemen.

“I have to buy whole coins or bars.”

A common misconception is that gold must be bought and sold  in large, set quantities. This can make people feel that they need thousands of pounds to get started. However, TallyMoney allows you to buy as much or as little as you want, making gold accessible to anyone. Whether you want to start with £10 or £10,000+, TallyMoney allows you to build your gold savings at your own pace, without the need to purchase full bars or coins. Every milligram of gold you own is fully allocated to you – and is yours to make payments out or spend at any time.

“Gold returns are heavily taxed.”

Some people assume that any gains from gold investments are eroded by taxes, making it a less attractive option compared to other investments. While it’s true that in the UK, any realised increase (when you sell) in gold’s value is subject to Capital Gains Tax (CGT) (currently at 24%), this is often still more favourable than the tax you’d pay on any interest earned from cash savings in a bank. Savings interest is taxed at your marginal income tax rate, which can be 40% or 45% for higher earners – significantly more than the CGT rate on gold. This makes gold a potentially more tax-efficient way to store and grow wealth, especially for those in higher tax brackets. As always, it’s worth checking with a financial advisor to understand how gold fits into your personal tax situation.

The bottom line

Gold is one of the most reliable stores of value in history, and today, it’s easier to own than ever before. Unlike other investments which can be complex, costly, risky, or heavily influenced by outside forces, physical gold ownership offers a sense of security and stability. With TallyMoney removing complexity and barriers to entry, investing in gold is no longer just for the ultra-rich – it’s for anyone looking to protect and grow their savings.

By breaking down these myths and understanding the reality of gold ownership, you can make an informed decision about how to safeguard and supercharge your wealth.

Ready to take control of the value of your savings? Discover how simple gold ownership can be with TallyMoney today and take control of your financial future.

Continue Reading

How to beat the hidden tax on your savings

Are your savings working for you, or a bank?

Saving strategies: how often should you save?

Let’s get physical: How much gold bullion and printed fiat currency actually exists?

Why Faster Payments aren’t always so fast

How to get a TallyMoney account

Real World Examples

  1. Fancy a coffee? Use your TallyMoney Mastercard. Boom – paid. (Yes, you’re buying a flat white with gold. How amazing is that?)

  2. Need cash? Use any Mastercard ATM worldwide or spend across the globe. ZERO fees from us, ZERO markup. (When you spend or withdraw, your gold converts instantly at the global spot price. No catches, no hidden charges – just straight-up Mastercard exchange rates. Because your money shouldn’t cost you… more money.)

  3. Want some money back in your bank? Just tap ‘transfer’ in the app. (Though after a while, you might wonder why you’d want to…)

    Zero faff. Zero waiting. Zero fees when you spend tally.

Meet Cameron Parry

Meet the guy who wouldn’t accept being trapped in a ‘heads they win, tales we lose’ government-run monetary system that protects and benefits the financial institutions, to the detriment of the public. Where people’s deposits are constantly at risk, and losing value through inflation caused by central bankers and politicians.

If necessity is the mother of invention, then frustration may be the roommate’s cousin of motivation. In any case, he decided to stop getting mad and start a new monetary system with sound money. Where deposits serve the depositor, where savings build wealth for savers, and transactions are made in a familiar way. And he called it TallyMoney.

TallyMoney: Gold upgraded

With TallyMoney:

  • Your pounds instantly become physical gold (1 tally = 1mg of real gold)
    Stored in Swiss vaults (not under your bed)
  • Fully insured and allocated (actually yours, not a paper promise)
  • Spend it anywhere with your TallyMoney debit Mastercard
  • Transfer back to pounds instantly if needed (but why would you?)

We’re not anti-bank because it’s trendy. We’re anti-bank because the current system is rigged against you. Every day you leave money in a “savings” account, you’re funding their profits while your wealth evaporates.

Enter gold: the original currency

Why gold? It’s value is universally acknowledged.

  • It’s not controlled by any single government
  • It can’t be printed or manufactured
  • It’s actually scarce 
  • It requires effort to extract it 
  • It doesn’t rust, decay, or disappear
  • It has remarkable properties

So while the pound’s lost 50% of its value since 2004, gold’s grown by 146% in the last decade alone. While your bank savings got mugged by inflation, gold owners were laughing all the way to… well, not the bank.

But here’s the rub: Traditional gold ownership is a right pain. Buy physical bars? Prepare for storage fees that’ll make your eyes water, insurance premiums that never end, and a 5-10% haircut when you need to sell. Plus, try buying your weekly shop with a gold ingot.
Paper gold ETFs? They’re classed as Tier 3 assets for a reason – that’s financial speak for “risky as hell.” You don’t own gold, you own a promise. A tradeable IOU. And when everyone wants their gold at once? Good luck with that. So you’re stuffed either way: real gold that’s impossible to use, or fake gold that might not be there when you need it.
Until now.

The truth about inflation

How? Well, when politicians overspend (and they invariably do), they need more money to ‘stimulate the economy’. But raising taxes makes voters angry. So what do they do? They fire up the money printer, and boy do they love to print. To give you a sense of the scale, since 2015 the Bank of England has created £520bn out of thin air through “quantitative easing” (electronic money printing) plus £86bn in physical currency. 

Thing is, more pounds in circulation = each pound is worth less. Think about it: In 2004, £100 could buy you a decent night out, theatre tickets, and a cab home. Today? That same £100 barely covers the theatre tickets. Your money didn’t disappear – it was diluted, like someone’s been topping up your whisky with water when you weren’t looking.

The “2% inflation target” they bang on about? That’s them telling you they plan to steal 2% of your wealth every single year. And calling it healthy.

How TallyMoney actually works?

  1. First things first: we’ve got actual gold bullion* (none of that paper-promise nonsense) locked up tight in a Brinks vault in Switzerland. Yeah, those Brinks – the security legends who’ve been protecting valuables since Queen Victoria was on the throne.

  2. You send your pounds to your TallyMoney account (bye-bye, inflation-addicted fiat!).

  3. We use the global gold spot price to instantly turn your currency into its weight in gold. No hidden or fuzzy exchange rates, just the real market gold price + 1.49% gold purchase fee.

  4. Each milligram of your physical gold = 1 tally (we keep it decimal because no one wants to faff about with troy ounces – the specific unit for measuring gold).

  5. That’s it! Your app shows your balance in tally, but remember – those aren’t just numbers on a screen. That’s your solid gold, in milligrams, sitting pretty in Switzerland.
  6. You can now save and spend your gold as you see fit.

*All Tally gold is sourced from LBMA-accredited providers because we’re rebels with a cause… and standards. Instead of tracking the gold price per kg, your money is directly converted based on the real-time global gold spot price.

TallyMoney is 
real money

  1. Store of value
    Your gold sits in a Swiss vault (not getting ‘quantitatively eased’ away)
    Evidenced by 5,000 years of holding its value
    Can’t be inflated by government whim and fingers on the ‘currency print’ button
  2. Medium of exchange
    Spendable at 150+ million shops worldwide (thanks, Mastercard)
    Currency converts instantly at market rates (no sneaky margins)
    Moves as quickly as sending a text 
  3. Unit of account
    1 tally = 1mg of gold. Simple
    Stable enough to actually plan your future with
    Speaks every currency’s language (gold’s kind of a big deal everywhere)

This is why TallyMoney is so much more than just owning Gold – it’s a real financial revolution. We’re not just helping you own gold; we’re bringing back what money was always meant to be. Sound Money for a Brighter Future. Because your hard work and wealth deserve better than being slowly robbed by external forces.

We want you to have real money

  1. A store of value:
    Keeps its value over time
    Insulated from devaluation/inflation
    Actually rare and can’t be created out of thin air
  2. Medium of exchange:
    Easy to use for everyday transactions
    Widely accepted
    Can be transferred efficiently
  3. Unit of account:
    Works like a proper value-measuring stick (imagine if your ruler shrunk every year – mad, right?)
    Splits nicely into useful bits
    Reliable enough to plan your future with

Why does this matter? Because your hard work deserves better than being turned into monopoly money by someone else’s actions. Every time your currency loses value (inflation) its stealing from your past work, which harms your present savings, and your future dreams.