Assume you had placed $10,000 into 3-month U.S. Treasury Bills at the beginning of 2002. At the end of five years, the buying power of your money would have decreased by -$116.19, or -1.2%, when taking inflation into account. If instead you had used $5,000 to purchase gold and silver ($2,500 each) and put the other $5,000 into 3-month U.S. Treasury Bills, your buying power would have increased by $5,977.28, a gain of 59.8%.