One simple habit could have changed the way your family thinks about wealth.
Imagine that ten years ago you made one simple decision:
Put $100 a week into physical gold and silver.
Not $10,000.
Not $100,000.
Just $100 a week.
Over ten years, that is:
$52,000 of your own money.
Now ask yourself:
What could that $52,000 have become if you had consistently converted part of it into physical gold and silver?
The answer is worth looking at.
Gold and Silver: The Numbers Tell the Story
According to historical price data published by The Perth Mint, on 30 June 2016:
Gold: A$1,773.53 per ounce
Silver: A$24.65 per ounce
Fast forward to 17 September 2026, and The Perth Mint’s Australian dollar spot prices were approximately:
Gold: A$6,038.78 per ounce
Silver: A$89.88 per ounce.
That means over roughly ten years:
Gold increased by approximately 240%
A$1,773.53 → A$6,038.78
Silver increased by approximately 265%
A$24.65 → A$89.88
These are not predictions.
They are historical Australian dollar prices.
And they demonstrate just how dramatically the value of precious metals has changed over the past decade.
What Does That Mean for $52,000?
There is an important distinction here.
A genuine $100-a-week cost-averaging strategy would involve 520 separate purchases, each made at the price available at the time.
Therefore, you cannot accurately say that $52,000 invested every week would simply be worth a particular amount today without calculating every purchase.
But we can use the ten-year price movement to illustrate the scale of the change.
If someone had invested a hypothetical $52,000 as a single amount in gold at A$1,773.53 per ounce in June 2016, that money would have represented approximately 29.32 ounces.
At A$6,038.78 per ounce today, those ounces would be worth approximately:
A$177,000
Similarly, if $52,000 had been invested in silver at A$24.65 per ounce in June 2016, it would have represented approximately 2,109 ounces.
At A$89.88 per ounce today, that silver would be worth approximately:
A$189,600
These are illustrations of price appreciation, not the result of a real $100-a-week investment plan. They also exclude premiums, storage, transaction costs and taxation.
The real lesson is simpler:
Physical gold and silver have increased substantially in Australian dollar terms over the past decade.
But You Didn’t Need to Pick the Perfect Time
This is where regular purchasing becomes interesting.
One of the biggest misconceptions about gold and silver is that you need to know exactly when prices are going to rise.
You don’t.
Nobody knows exactly where gold or silver will be next month, next year or five years from now.
Prices rise.
Prices fall.
Markets correct.
Currencies move.
Interest rates change.
Economic conditions change.
And financial headlines constantly tell us that now is either the perfect time to buy or the worst possible time to buy.
This is why regular purchasing and cost averaging can be useful.
Instead of trying to predict the market, you establish a habit of purchasing a fixed amount regularly.
When prices are lower, your money buys more metal.
When prices are higher, your money buys less.
Over time, the purchases build into a physical holding of gold and silver.
The objective isn’t to get every purchase right.
The objective is to keep accumulating.
FirstGold’s approach to cost averaging is designed around this principle.
What If You Had Left the Money in the Bank?
Cash has an important role in every household.
You need money available for everyday expenses, emergencies and short-term commitments.
But there is a difference between saving money and building long-term wealth.
Australian interest rates have changed dramatically over the past decade.
The RBA cash rate was 1.75% in June 2016, eventually fell to just 0.10% during the pandemic and subsequently increased again as inflation pressures returned.
So the return available from cash has changed considerably over the period.
But there is another issue that is often overlooked:
Purchasing power.
If you have $100,000 in the bank, you still have $100,000.
But if the cost of living rises significantly, that $100,000 may not buy what it once did.
This is why looking only at the number on a bank statement can be misleading.
Wealth isn’t simply how many dollars you have.
It is what those dollars can actually buy.
Gold and Silver Are Different From Cash
Gold does not pay interest.
Silver does not pay a dividend.
Neither promises you a regular income.
Instead, their value comes from the metal itself and what buyers are willing to pay for it.
Physical precious metals also have characteristics that are different from many financial assets.
They are:
Physical.
Portable.
Divisible.
Globally recognised.
Not dependent on a company continuing to operate.
And they can be accumulated gradually.
You don’t need to wait until you have hundreds of thousands of dollars.
You can begin with an amount that fits your circumstances.
What About Australian Property?
For generations, Australians have been taught that property is one of the foundations of wealth creation.
For many families, property has indeed been an important part of building wealth.
But property and physical bullion are very different assets.
Property generally requires a substantial initial commitment and, for many buyers, significant borrowing.
There are also rates, insurance, maintenance, repairs, legal costs and transaction costs.
And property isn’t easily divisible.
You cannot normally take $100 of your house and sell it tomorrow.
Gold and silver are different.
You can accumulate them gradually.
You can hold small amounts.
You can increase your holdings over time.
And when you own physical bullion, you own an asset that is recognised around the world.
The Power of $100 a Week
This is where the example becomes particularly powerful.
Imagine starting with:
$100 a week
After one year:
$5,200 contributed
After five years:
$26,000 contributed
After ten years:
$52,000 contributed
That is money you would have spent, saved or invested somewhere else.
Now imagine that instead of simply accumulating dollars, you had regularly converted some of that money into physical gold and silver.
Some purchases would have been made when prices were high.
Others would have been made when prices were low.
You would have bought through rallies.
You would have bought through corrections.
You would have bought when the headlines were positive.
And you would have bought when the headlines were negative.
You wouldn’t have needed to predict the bottom.
You wouldn’t have needed to predict the top.
You would simply have kept accumulating.
That’s the power of the habit.
Gold Has Not Gone Up Every Year
It is important to be realistic.
Gold and silver do not rise every year.
They can experience significant corrections.
The Perth Mint’s historical data shows that precious metals have experienced periods of both strong gains and declines.
That is precisely why a long-term accumulation strategy is different from trying to speculate on tomorrow’s price.
The objective is not to predict every market movement.
It is to gradually build a holding over time.
Gold and Silver Aren’t About Getting Rich Overnight
At FirstGold, we believe this distinction is important.
Gold and silver are not simply about getting rich quickly.
They can form part of a strategy for accumulating and preserving physical wealth over time.
Gold does not pay interest.
It doesn’t send you a dividend.
There is no company promising to repay you.
You own the metal.
That makes physical bullion fundamentally different from many financial assets.
It also means investors need to understand that gold and silver prices can fall as well as rise.
There is no guarantee of future performance.
Why Physical Matters
There is an enormous difference between knowing that the price of gold has risen and actually owning physical gold.
At FirstGold, the focus is on 100% physical bullion.
Gold, silver and platinum are accumulated on behalf of customers and held in secure private vaulting arrangements, with customers able to track their holdings.
Customers can buy, sell, transfer and ultimately redeem their physical metal.
The Question Every Family Should Be Asking
If you are serious about protecting the wealth you have worked hard to create, perhaps the question isn’t:
“Will gold go up next month?”
Perhaps the better question is:
“How much of my family’s wealth should I hold in something tangible?”
That is a very different question.
Because none of us knows exactly what the financial environment will look like in five, ten or twenty years.
Interest rates will change.
Currencies will change.
Markets will rise and fall.
Economic conditions will change.
But families can make decisions today about how they structure and diversify their wealth.
Get Your Family’s House in Order
Most families spend years building their financial lives.
They buy a home.
They pay down debt.
They build superannuation.
They maintain savings.
They insure their property.
They plan for their children’s future.
But one part of wealth planning is often overlooked:
What tangible wealth are you actually accumulating for the next generation?
This is a conversation worth having around the kitchen table.
Talk to your partner.
Talk to your children.
Talk to your parents.
Teach the next generation that building wealth isn’t simply about earning more money.
It is about:
What you keep.
What you own.
What you protect.
And what you pass on.
Don’t Wait for the Perfect Price
There will always be a reason to wait.
Gold is too expensive.
Silver has gone up too much.
Interest rates might fall.
Interest rates might rise.
The economy might improve.
The economy might get worse.
There is always another headline.
But ten years from now, the question will be simple:
Did you start?
Because $100 a week doesn’t sound like a fortune.
But over ten years it becomes:
$52,000
And over twenty years:
$104,000
That is before considering any change in the value of the assets purchased.
The amount matters.
But the habit may matter even more.
Start Building Physical Wealth Today
You don’t need to start with thousands of dollars.
You don’t need to wait until you have more money.
Start with what you can afford.
$50 a week.
$100 a week.
$200 a week.
The amount is less important than establishing a disciplined habit of putting something aside.
Cost averaging means you don’t have to know exactly where the market is going.
You simply keep accumulating.
Because you cannot control the price of gold.
You cannot control the price of silver.
You cannot control interest rates.
You cannot control inflation.
But you can control what you do with your money.
If your goal is to build and preserve physical wealth for yourself and your family, putting a plan in place today can be more meaningful than waiting for the perfect moment.
Build wealth one gram at a time with FirstGold.
Disclaimer: General information only and not financial advice. Past performance is not an indication of future performance. Gold and silver prices fluctuate and can fall as well as rise. Historical examples are based on Australian dollar spot prices published by The Perth Mint and do not account for bullion premiums, storage, transaction costs, taxation or the precise timing of individual purchases. The $52,000 example represents $100 per week for 520 weeks. The hypothetical gold and silver values shown above are illustrative calculations based on a single purchase at the historical starting price and are not the result of an actual weekly cost-averaging strategy. Actual results will vary.
