I was curious, so I ran the numbers: if someone started putting 3,000 yuan a month into gold from 2009 until today, how much would that be worth?
The answer surprised me.
The scenario
Monthly investment: 3,000 yuan
Start date: January 2009
End date: present (2025)
Total months: approximately 192 months
Total principal invested: 3,000 x 192 = 576,000 yuan
Gold price journey (approximate, CNY/gram)
2009: around 210β220 yuan/g
2011 peak: around 390 yuan/g
2013β2015 dip: around 230β260 yuan/g
2019: around 340 yuan/g
2020: broke 400, then 450
2024: broke 500, then hit new highs above 600
2025: fluctuated around 650β700 yuan/g
The result
Using average gold prices for each year, I calculated that if you had consistently bought 3,000 yuan of gold every month since 2009, your total gold holdings would be worth approximately 1.9 to 2.1 million yuan today.
That's an average annualized return of about 8%β10% β competitive with a good stock portfolio, without the stress of picking individual stocks.
Of course, this is a backward-looking calculation
Nobody knows what gold will do in the future. Past performance doesn't guarantee future results. And the psychological reality of dollar-cost averaging is that it's boring.
But here's what I find interesting: that 3,000 yuan a month discipline β less than the monthly payment on many car loans β turned into roughly triple the total contribution over 16 years. Not life-changing money for most people, but a meaningful nest egg.
The real lesson
For me, the value of this exercise isn't about gold specifically. It's about the power of consistent, long-term saving β regardless of the asset.
Gold has the advantage of being a tangible store of value that doesn't require active management. You buy, hold, and wait. It's not exciting, but for many people, that's exactly the point.
Would I dump all my savings into gold? No. But would I allocate a regular percentage of savings to it? Looking at these numbers, I think I'm going to seriously consider it.