Personally, I think you should always have some money in physical gold. All of the world's currencies are fiat currencies and entirely rely on trust. It may not be in our lifetime, but at some point they will all fail and gold will still have value.

I do have some money in gold that will probably be converted back to dollars at some point. If we see inflation like we did in the early 80's then going long with government bonds makes a lot of sense. I would avoid corporate bonds in that sort of environment as they will refinance the debt at a lower rate when interest rates improve.

Real estate would be fine, except you had better be able to purchase the property without financing. Theoretically, in an inflationary environment real estate will rise as well, however with the recent real estate bubble this may be farther off.

Don't forget silver also.

I like the silver certificates instead of actually buying silver

When you look at the how much silver we are using up compared with how much we are digging out of the ground it seems like a no brainer.

I bough gold and silver back in 1999. Anyone remember Y2K? Well it seems to have been worth it. But of course, only if I sell at the right time also. I bought the metals after selling my shares in Homestake Mining thinking I wanted the real stuff.