Thank you guys a lot, for sharing your thoughts - everything gets considered!
My rough plan is, as some of you might already figured out from my postings, to acquire some bit of land, that would be big enough for eventual self-sustenance. BUT, taking into account the reality, and how everything will inevitably unveil, in my humble opinion, going forward - I do NOT believe, that market forces will be able to FORCE politicians to do the right things - for many reasons discussed here, I don't see it happening. So in my opinion, we will continue to see things deteriorate, and economic reality being distorted with zero interest rates, inflation going higher and pushing prices upwards, etc. -until the (very) sorry end.
Thus, taking this into regard, my general plan is, to lock-in the leverage provided by low interest rates, and just pay down a minimal down-payment to get a mortgage on the land I plan to buy. This way, I would free the most of that lump sum, to make some other investments, that WILL get inflated, while money gets printed around the globe. Although I am 100% confident, that at least here in Ireland, land & houses will continue to go down - but you can already get quite amazing deals on the distressed estate auctions right now. But other than that, the market is lumbering nowhere but down - but also, thanks to all the government meddling - at nowhere the speed rate I would expect it to go, from the sheer size of the previous bubble.
I also believe, mid/long term, blue chip stocks are amongst the safest things, that would benefit from Bernankes of this World blowing bubbles with our currencies. Apart from, obviously, that other (hypothetical, of course) heavy stuff, we read & write about here
.
So this would be my diversification plan, in general:
1. short-term (10 years, 15 at most, but unwillingly), fixed interest rate mortgage - leveraged land (although nothing that I couldn't sustain, and/or could loose, shall I need to stay, say, one year on forced unemployment - already quite a stretch in stress-testing myself, I think), that still CAN go down from here, (but I should not care if it costs me less or similar to my current rent) - all depends on the property, location & price - but the risk is much lower now here, with prices declining so much from the previous highs, and I am doing my homework in this regard, and knowing the attitude of Irish property companies, it is quite possible, that I could teach some of them a thing or two about their trade & the market now. Secondly, the land usually does much better than general properties, in severe depressions - people can move back to their parents when they loose their houses, but they all still need to eat, and the land is required to feed them. So that is another risk-mitigating factor. Lastly, I do have maybe two business ideas, what I'd like to do with it, that could potentially work - not necessarily traditional farming
3. Some (hypothetical, of course) PMs. I would invest roughly half of my lump sum in them. My plan would be to buy Gold & silver, in 50/50 amounts (dollar terms) - which would give it roughly 1:40 GSR ratio (in OZ terms) in the portfolio.
4. some (not much) potentially high-yield stock plays (some of the biotech, some of the "consumer" robotics (ie not industrial), some of the junior miners maybe - things that I can at least get some grasp on understanding the business)
5. rest would be cash, to try & pick some blue chip stocks, or maybe take a share in some promising local business during the (inevitable) bust cycles. I think we will have one sooner rather than later, with the latest QE to infinity and beyond - have seen some interesting chart, showing that about 40% of market "ups", happened IN ANTICIPATION OF ANNOUNCEMENTS OF QE programs, and NOT as an EFFECT of the announcements (ie stocks were going up shortly BEFORE QEs were expected to be announced, and shortly AFTER the announucement - before resuming the slump down). New QE, which is open-ended - gets rid of that anticipatory part of the play (well done, Ben - law of unintended consequences, anyone?
).
Sorry if all this above reads slightly incoherently - didn't have time to edit properly my non-native speaker ramblings today!
Thanks again for your thoughts, guys, much appreciated! Keep the ideas flowing