If you've been trying to find a place to invest your money and are feeling uneasy with U.S. stocks and bonds, consider looking overseas.

You should know that an increasing number of experts are encouraging clients to boost their holdings in international currencies -- a once-rarefied market that's become more accessible to individual investors.

The reason they're pushing foreign currencies is simple. Rising U.S. government debt levels suggest future inflation and continuing devaluation of the dollar. That spells an opportunity for investors willing to take a chance on foreign money that often becomes comparatively more valuable as the dollar slides.

"There is no question now is the appropriate time to investigate some allocation to foreign currencies, if you haven't already," said Richard Weiss, executive vice president and chief investment officer at City National Bank in Los Angeles. "If you wait until everybody is talking about dollar devaluation, you're too late. The opportunity is now."

Foreign currency trading, which essentially involves buying the debt of foreign countries (much as foreign investors buy U.S. Treasury bills and bonds) is, well, foreign to most individual investors.

That's largely because it was once primarily done by only super-wealthy individuals and institutions through bank currency trading departments. However, over the last few years, it's become widely accessible for even middle-income investors through two vehicles -- exchange-traded mutual funds and bank certificates of deposit.

Exchange-traded funds can either buy the currencies directly or buy options and futures contracts that obligate them to buy baskets of currencies in the future. The more speculative these funds become in investing in futures contracts, the more widely their returns can swing.

For those who can't handle that type of volatility, there's the certificate of deposit option offered by Jacksonville, Fla.-based EverBank. EverBank offers short- and long-term certificates of deposit that can be denominated in any one of a dozen foreign currencies.

These CDs are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., but that does not protect them from investment loss.

What the FDIC is protecting, in this case, is the value of your investment if the bank fails. But the value of the foreign currencies in your account could rise or fall, depending on the relative strength of the U.S. dollar against the currency you have selected.

Say, for instance, that you invest $20,000 in a one-year CD denominated in British pounds and it pays 5 percent interest. You give your $20,000 to EverBank and the bank converts it to pounds at the going exchange rate. A year later, you have $1,000 in interest, but your entire account is denominated in British pounds. But to spend that money in the U.S., you need to exchange the pounds back into dollars.

If the British pound has gained against the U.S. dollar, you get a double benefit -- a return on the currency swing as well as on your investment. If the pound has gained by 5 percent against the dollar during that period, you come home with $22,050 -- a 5 percent return on your initial $20,000 investment, plus a 5 percent return on the $21,000 you're converting into U.S. dollars.

If, however, the British pound slides in value against the dollar, you could end up with a loss -- despite the investment income. If the pound loses 10 percent, for example, you have just $18,900 -- the $21,000 you had in pounds minus the currency exchange loss of 10 percent, or $2,100.

Don't want to risk losing any of the money in your CD? EverBank also has a hybrid product that will allow you to bet on the currencies of Brazil, Russia, India and China as a group, without risking your principal. Continued...