Welcome to our next article in our “finfluencer” series which examines popular claims circulating online or in print. Our goal is to help you separate the signal from the noise. In other words, what matters and what doesn’t. At Hill Investment Group, we believe good advice should be simple, clear, and grounded in evidence, not hype.

Heard something at work, on the course, or on social media that made you pause? Send it to zenz@hillinvestmentgroup.com. We’ll help unpack it. Submissions are confidential. With your permission, we may quote an anonymized version in a future post.

This Month’s Topic: Currency Debasement

The term currency debasement (the act of reducing its value) has recently become a favorite talking point among financial influencers. The claim is that the U.S. dollar is “losing value,” and that the supposed evidence lies in the rising prices of gold and bitcoin. Some interpret this to mean that investors holding dollar-denominated portfolios are quietly falling behind and should buy gold or bitcoin.

This storyline is designed to cause fear and get clicks, but it fundamentally misrepresents how value is created and how real wealth should be measured. Let’s dig in.

Assets vs. Stores of Value

There are two basic categories of things investors can own.

Productive assets – like stocks, bonds, and real estate – create value over time through earnings, interest, or rent. For example, a company may invest in building a factory that manufactures widgets to sell for a profit. When you own a share of that company, you own some portion of those profits, as well as any future profits. These are the types of investments that our clients own in their Hill Investment Group portfolios.

Stores of value – like gold, bitcoin, or fiat currencies (currencies issued by governments, like euros or dollars) – do not create value; they simply represent it. Owning bitcoin doesn’t generate more bitcoin. Stated differently, there is no economic engine in bitcoin or any commodity like gold, silver, or corn, that generates more of that item. Instead, these “stores of value” fluctuate relative to one another as investors’ preferences and supply/demand conditions change.

Owning productive assets means owning a share of future output and innovation. Owning stores of value means holding something that sits still while the world moves around it. Comparing them isn’t apples to oranges – it’s apples to basketballs.

Measuring What Actually Matters

The rise or fall of gold and bitcoin doesn’t determine whether your wealth has been “debased.” Those price movements simply reflect changing exchange rates between stores of value. Measuring your wealth in gold or bitcoin vs. dollars is like measuring your weight in kilograms vs. pounds – the number changes, but you don’t.

What matters is whether your productive assets are growing faster than your liabilities – your living expenses, savings goals, and future spending needs. Inflation, not the price of gold or bitcoin, is what affects your actual purchasing power.

If your portfolio grows faster than inflation, your real wealth is rising – no matter what gold or bitcoin are doing relative to the dollar. You want to invest in assets that you expect to increase in value relative to your liabilities, not assets that are meant to store value.

An Evidence-Based Alternative

At Hill Investment Group, we focus on building globally diversified portfolios that are designed to compound wealth in real, inflation-adjusted terms across decades. A disciplined mix of equities and high-quality fixed income has historically been one of the most effective ways to preserve and grow purchasing power over time.

Unlike commodities or speculative stores of value, productive assets participate in global capitalism, delivering cash flows that rise with the economy and outpace inflation across decades.

The Bottom Line

“Currency debasement” makes for catchy headlines but poor guidance. Gold and bitcoin may surge or stall, but neither creates lasting economic value. A disciplined, evidence-based portfolio – anchored in productive assets – remains the most reliable path to maintaining real purchasing power and achieving your goals in the currency that matters most: your own.

Want to learn more? Set up a time to talk with us here. 

Every once in a while, an event reminds me just how much our work together matters. Our evening with Carl Richards was one of those moments…a room full of people opening up, reflecting, and reconnecting with what’s truly important.

A number of you joined us at the Racquet Club in St. Louis for a conversation that was part money, part meaning, and entirely human. Thank you for being there. And for those who couldn’t join in person, we felt your support from afar.

The energy in the room was palpable. People leaned in, shared openly, and allowed themselves to be moved. Since then, we’ve received thoughtful notes inspired by Carl’s sketches. It’s a reminder that a simple line, drawn with intention, can shift how we see our decisions and ourselves.

In my introduction that evening, I shared a story about meeting a couple on vacation whose wife was “famous to some.” That phrase describes Carl perfectly. He isn’t trying to be famous. He’s trying to be useful. Based on your reactions, he was.

The questions I asked Carl reflect the way we think at Hill Investment Group:

• What’s the story behind the sketches that make the complex simple without being simplistic?
• What feelings sit just below our financial decisions?
• How do we align the values we claim with the choices we make?

Carl reminded us that money is rarely the real topic. It’s a doorway into purpose and clarity.

My biggest takeaway from the evening is this:

At Hill Investment Group, our job is twofold. We help clients make the most of their capital, picking up every penny possible through evidence and disciplined implementation. And we help clients make the most of what matters in their lives through goal setting, accountability, and behavioral coaching.

We’ve been doing this work for 20 years, and we plan to keep doing it for 20 more, for a select group of long-view thinkers.

For those outside St. Louis, we want you to feel part of the experience too.

If you’d like a complimentary copy of Carl’s newest book, just email us and we’ll send one your way.

Here’s to a year ahead defined by gratitude, clearer choices, and deeper alignment between money and what matters most.

Take the Long View,

The power of slowing down when everything around us says hurry.

I just finished Lonesome Dove (widely considered one of the greatest Westerns of all time). At 850 pages, it doesn’t move quickly, and that’s the point. You can’t rush it. You get pulled into the dust, the dialogue, the ache of it all.

Right after closing the book, I was on Mackinac Island. No cars, no horns. Just horse-drawn carriages, bikes, and time measured by the clop of hooves. Real horsepower! It’s one of the few places that forces a slowdown, and in that stillness, you actually start to notice things again – texture, tone, the weather moving through.

In investing, there’s no reliably fast way to get rich. We all know the parable of the tortoise and the hare, but modern life makes it so tempting to rush. The social media feed refreshes, the markets move, and it feels like we need to move too. It takes real discipline to slow down; to stick with something through the long, quiet stretches.

Fall feels like the right season to remember that. It’s a time of gratitude and reflection, of harvesting what we’ve grown, and of preparing the soil for what’s next.

Investing well isn’t about reacting to every market twitch. It’s about owning global capitalism, rebalancing patiently, and letting time compound the quiet and yet powerful work happening underneath the surface.

We’ve been at this long enough to see it firsthand. Our clients’ returns over the last 20 years, and more than 25 years if you go back to when we first started using this evidence-based approach, tell the story clearly. The discipline of staying invested, diversified, patient, and calm through every kind of market storm pays off.

In a world obsessed with speed, the slow things still win.

Take the long view.