You can't invest in gold, unless you are buying stock in or bonds from a gold mining operation, gold smithing operation, or gold trading company. That is the extent to which anyone can "invest" in gold. What you can do is buy gold as an asset.

If you are doing this with the hope that Gold will prove a safe haven for your liquid assets, you are wrong as the price is already inflated, as such you will sell your gold at a loss, once a new currency is determined by the market (assuming a crash in the U.S. dollar).

If you are betting on a quick turn around, and increased value of the asset, that is a bet not an investment.

This basic lack of financial literacy is the cause of all financial crisies. If people understood the basic concepts of finance, they would have enough common sense not to expect value to spring fully formed from the head of Bernie Madoff.

Gambling is fun, I do it myself with money I can afford to lose. It is not a strategy for profitability in the long run.

A smart gambler can get lucky, but everyone's luck runs out, and if you think gold is a "safe place" for your money, you really don't understand finance or the laws of the market.

The laws of the market are like God in that your lack of belife in them has no bearing on their actual existence. The laws of the market differ from God in that God usually will not smite you for your disbelife and blasphamey, where as the market always will.

You can be atheistic with regard to the laws of the market, but that will not save your portfolio.

But gold is as real an asset as stocks or dollars.

In fact, one can argue that both stocks and dollars are more real than gold.

Gold has limited commercial value beyond jewelry and semi conductors. While those uses give some value to the price go gold, gold's value is primarily a result of speculative buying and gambling on the assets worth. The supply of gold far outstrips it's real demand in jewelry and technology, and it is this investment and speculative demand that determines the majority of the value of gold.

Because of that, once speculation in gold ceases, the value of gold plummits as it's real demand as a commodity is far less than it's speculative value. Right now we are in the midst of a major gold bubble brought on by fear of the real value of the dollar and other asset classes.

That fear will eventually subside as the real value of other assets is sorted out.

Eventually either the dollar or the euro or the rubel or the yuan will be seen as a solid currency with adequate liquidity, and gold will be traded for that currency. As gold is iliquid it is always at a disadvantage as speculative purchase, since it cannot be immedeatly traded for anything. As such gold is an asset to hold, but you never want to let that asset be held for too long. Eventually a winner will be determined in the great global derby that we currently are in, and at that time, gold's price will fall like a rock back to it's stablized asset cost. People buying into gold now thinking it has value will be made fools when they realize it has none.

As to where you should put you money, my first recomendation is a bank. Generally speaking that is the best place for liquid assets. Barring that, I would look for undervalued stocks of solid companies (the time for financial stocks is probably passed unless you are a gambler, right now look at industrial stocks). And as always bonds are a solid class of investment (provided you can track exactly where the bond is comming from and what it represents), though they may be a little over valued at the moment, your central concern is the stated return on the investment.