There is a monetary shift building that retirement savers will not see until it has happened.
Almost every retirement account in America is held in dollars.
But what your account is really worth is not the number on the statement. It is what that number can buy.
And since 1971 when Nixon cut the tie between the dollar and gold, this number is buying less every single year.
You feel it at the pump. You see it at the cash register.
Your savings have been running uphill against that erosion for more than 50 years.
Now Congress is taking a second look at the gold the government owns.
And a bill in Congress would require the Treasury to reprice the government’s gold on its books, at market value.
Here is why it matters to you.
The government values its own gold at $42 an ounce. Congress set that price in 1973 and never changed it.
Gold trades at over $4,000 today.
America holds more gold than any country on earth. On the books, it is worth about $11 billion. In the real world, more than $1 trillion.
That is a gap of about 95 times, sitting on the nation’s books, in plain sight.
And Washington has noticed. That is what the repricing bill is.
If that number is ever corrected, Washington books a trillion-dollar gain. From gold.
The Americans who already hold physical gold did not wait for Washington to notice.
More than 60 million Americans qualify to move a portion of their savings into physical gold right now. Tax-free. Penalty-free.
The 2026 Gold Guide walks through every step.
Takes 30 seconds to request.
Nixon made his move on a Sunday night. No warning.
If it changes again, the only question is which side you are standing on.
Altria’s 6% Yield Runs on Pricing Power. How Long Can That Last?
Altria has raised its quarterly dividend 61 times in 57 years. That is not a typo, and it is not a coincidence. It is a business model.
The board increased the quarterly payout by 4.7% to $1.11 per share in August, consistent with management’s stated goal of mid-single-digit annual dividend growth through 2028. With a yield of roughly 6%, MO stands out as one of the more compelling passive income options in the S&P 500, and the Q3 results handed income investors something to feel good about. Altria topped Wall Street expectations and raised its full-year earnings guidance, with reported net revenues rising 1% year over year to $6.132 billion.
But the architecture beneath that yield deserves a hard look.
Altria’s dividend policy is tied to adjusted diluted EPS, not GAAP earnings. The company’s stated target is to pay out about 80% of adjusted diluted EPS as dividends. With the stock around $76 in early November, up about 38% year to date, the yield looks straightforward. The durability is not.
Price realization came in at 4.4% for Q3, which is what keeps earnings growing while volume shrinks. When adjusted for trade inventory movements, management estimated domestic cigarette volumes for both Q3 and the first nine months declined by 4%, against an estimated 5% drop for the broader industry. Altria is losing fewer smokers than its competitors, but it is still losing them. The pricing offset has worked reliably for years. At some point, the price hike strategy will not be enough to keep profits growing.
The volume-versus-price tension is not unique to tobacco. Procter & Gamble ran the same playbook of repeated price hikes while unit volumes fell, and its experience shows how long the offset can hold before the math turns against it.
The smoke-free pivot is real but uneven. The company expanded its nicotine pouch category with new flavors and a national rollout of on! PLUS products that includes a 12-milligram strength. That is genuine momentum. The NJOY side of the ledger is messier. Management has said NJOY ACE is expected to return to market, but there is still no confirmed timing, after the product was pulled following an ITC exclusion order tied to patent disputes involving Juul Labs. Altria and NJOY also filed a lawsuit against the FDA challenging the agency’s tobacco product review process. The vaping ambition is intact, but the execution has been slower and more litigious than income investors were promised.
Altria raised full-year adjusted diluted EPS guidance to $5.66 to $5.74, representing 4.5% to 6% growth. The $4.44 per share annual dividend represents about 78% of the midpoint of that guidance range, which sounds manageable until you factor in that cigarette volumes only move one direction.
Payout durability in defensive consumer names ultimately comes down to whether the underlying cash engine can absorb volume declines. Service Corporation International uses a deferred-revenue backlog structure to insulate margins from late-cycle pressure, a different mechanism but the same question income investors face here.
The honest framing for income investors is this: Altria is a machine that converts Marlboro pricing power into quarterly checks, and the smokeable segment’s adjusted OCI margin reached 64.5% in Q3, up from 64.4% a year earlier, which shows the machine still runs efficiently. The company has reaffirmed its progressive dividend goal targeting mid-single digits dividend per share growth annually through 2028. That target is credible today. Whether nicotine pouches and a reinstated NJOY ACE can carry it past 2028, without cigarette pricing eventually hitting a wall, is the question the yield does not answer for you.
