I bought gold for the first time about a decade ago, when the price was only around VND35 million per tael of 37.5 grams or 1.2 ounces.

At that time, I was an ordinary office worker with a modest income, but I had a habit of saving. Hearing many people say that gold is a safe way to preserve money, I decided to pool nearly all of my savings at the time to buy 10 taels of gold as a rainy day fund.

As prices went up over the years, I was quite indifferent until it hit around VND80 million per tael. At that point, the value of my gold had more than doubled to VND800 million.

I began to worry that there was no more room for prices to grow as they were already so high. With that mindset, I decided to cash out for an amount of money I had never imagined I could have.

But gold kept rising. When it reached VND90 million per tael in mid-2024, I started to panic. Fearing that prices would go higher, I bought some gold at the time even though I felt uneasy about the rushed purchase.

However, after I stocked up, gold prices suddenly nosedived to around VND70 million per tael. Watching my wealth decline in such a short time, I was terrified. The thought that I was “losing money” made me completely lose my composure and I made another compulsive decision to cut my losses.

I stopped looking at gold prices after that, but then they kept making the news with new records like VND120 million, VND150 million and, just early last week, VND190 million per tael.

If I had not let emotions and fear of missing out drive my decisions, the 10-tael stash I bought a decade ago might still be intact and its value today would have reached VND1.9 billion. I do not even have enough to buy back half of that amount now.

This is the painful lesson I learned from riding the gold “fever.” The current frenzy is making many people dream of getting rich quickly from precious metals. But prices can fluctuate wildly, and the losers are often those driven by emotion and impulse.

I would like to advise anyone who dreams of getting rich from gold to stay calm and be cautious. Do not buy out of fear of missing out at the peak, and do not sell just because you are afraid of “losing money.” Investing in gold, or any asset, requires discipline, a long-term perspective and knowledge, all of which I lacked when I jumped in. Hence, I ended up paying the price through my own rushed decisions.

*This opinion was submitted by a reader. Readers’ views are personal and do not necessarily match VnExpress’ viewpoints.