Not sure any of those will protect you. US equities should perform ok — IMO they’re already inflated because that’s where most of the “extra” money supply is sitting on the sidelines. Commodities futures (namely food) are probably your best play.
This has happened before — 90s Japan is what the US has in store for the 20s. The same collection of factors (high valuations after decades of rapid growth, a declining birth rate and an aging population) are present in the US. The main difference being there is no “safe haven” currency; the US is still a superpower and a declining US economy will hurt the global economy and set the stage for China to take over as the sole global superpower.
Coping with inflation creates extra taxes. There is no perfect mitigation.
Use your existing dollars to buy non-volatile assets like real estate or gold requires you to pay long term capital gains. Gold mostly keeps a constant value, but the dollar value goes down, and the gold price goes up. That looks like a "profit" and you need to pay 15%, soon to be 20%. Effectively, the effect of inflation decreases by 4/5.
For example. suppose you have $100. Holding it over two years of 2% inflation effectively makes the money worth 96$ = 100/(1.02^2). Instead, if you bought $100 of gold, hold for two years, and sell it for $104, you are taxes on 20% of $4. Your loss is $0.8 instead of $4.
Your need to ask for a raise proportional to inflation, but that puts you in higher tax brackets. Your new dollars over 85k are taxes at 24% instead of 10%. Asking for a raise is very difficult for some people...
Consensus is foreign equities (but not China), commodities, smaller high growth tech stocks, plenty of cash (with some gold, silver, btc if you're so inclined).
If you aren't already: yes, you should be diversified across US and foreign equities. In a word: VXUS (or as a mutual fund: VTIAX).
If you just want to preserve value of cash, you can buy I-series bonds from TreasuryDirect, to the tune of $10k/year. They have 20 year duration and track inflation. You can buy an unlimited amount of TIPS, although they aren't better than I-series bonds.
Just watch wealth being transferred upwards, as always.
I'm considering real estate, but don't have enough money for the downpayment, and in a crash, I will lose my job like everyone else and not be able to make my payments.
Buy TIPS, which are inflation-protected bonds, and sell (go short) nominal bonds. The difference between the two is almost exactly proportional to inflation expectations, and you are not inviting cross-contamination by other market moves.
hoard what you care about in the long run: family, friends, your business / career, health, education, home, bitcoin, your favorite company stocks. In other words, carry on as usual, nothing to see here.
