Has the idea of owning gold and using it to safeguard your retirement portfolio been tempting you? If yes, you’re not alone! This option is, rightfully so, appealing to most of those people who’re working on building their retirement portfolios and ensuring their own future financial stability. Gold, together with some other precious metals, has proved its worth to us countless times, and it has showed us that owning it leads to the exact financial stability we’re all hoping for. So, it’s not a surprise that you yourself are tempted by this option as well.
As tempted as you may be, you don’t want to go into any of this until you’re absolutely sure you know what you’re doing. You’ve probably done some reading on this already, and you’ve noticed that Individual Retirement Accounts are often mentioned in relation to gold and those other precious metals, which has made you wonder. Can you actually add gold to your IRA and if yes, then how can you do that? Well, that’s what we’re here to find out!
Can You Add Gold To Your Individual Retirement Account?
The answer to this specific question is both yes and no. Let’s start with the no first. If you have a traditional IRA and you’re hoping to just add gold to it without making any changes whatsoever, let me tell you right away that it won’t be possible. Those traditional accounts aren’t created with precious metals in mind, and they cannot allow for this particular opportunity, i.e. for the opportunity of investing in gold through them. Don’t lose your hope, though, all is not lost.
While the traditional accounts don’t allow for this option, there are those that do. After all, I said that the answer to the above question was both yes and no, and since we’ve covered the “no”, let’s now cover the “yes”. Basically, there are specific IRA accounts, known either as gold IRAs, or as self-directed IRAs (SDIRAs for short), that actually provide people with the opportunity of investing in precious metals for their retirement. So, if you’re thinking of adding this asset to your portfolio, you should get more info on the gold IRA and learn how to use it to your specific advantage and achieve the goal you’re after.
To sum things up, you can’t add gold to your traditional Individual Retirement Account, but you can set up a non-traditional one that’s called a SDIRA, and also commonly known as a gold IRA, and then invest in this asset through it. This answers your question of whether you can do this, so now it’s time to proceed to the question of how to do it. As you’ll see, things may not be as simple as you might have assumed, as there’s much more to do than simply set up the SDIRA that we’ve mentioned here. Still, you’ll do it perfectly and without any issues if you take the correct steps, and I’ll get you familiar with those right now.
How To Do It?
So, it’s clear that setting up a SDIRA is one of the steps you’ll have to take if you want to add gold to your retirement account. Naturally, you’d assume that this is the very first step, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Since going through this alone could be extremely difficult and complicated, I’d advise you to first take the step of partnering up with the right company, i.e. a precious metals dealer that will not only sell you the gold you want to buy, but also guide you through the whole process of setting up this account. Thus, you’ll have it much easier once you start working with these professionals.
When you begin searching for these professionals online, you’ll see that there are quite a lot of those you can actually work with, meaning that you’ll have to make a choice here, and that choice shouldn’t be made recklessly and at the spur of the moment. Instead, you should do your best to carefully consider which company to choose, and you should, of course, research various ones before making the final decision. The research should be focused on checking things like their experience level, their reputation, the specific services they offer and their fees, as well as the types of precious metals you can actually buy from them, because you’re probably not after gold alone.
Checking out websites, such as https://goldco.com/precious-metals-ira/gold-ira/ and the official sites of other companies you’ve found, should be your first step towards doing the necessary research. You’ll get all the info regarding the assets, the services, the fees, and even experience, by taking a close look at those sites. Reputation, on the other hand, won’t be so easily checked. You’ll have to search for other sources to determine their reputation, such as review websites and comments written by previous clients. In fact, if you could get in touch with some of those previous clients, that would also be of great help, as they’ll tell you pretty much everything you need to know about the cooperation quality.
Once you’ve gone through the choosing process and once you’ve partnered up with the perfect company, you can have them set up your SDIRA, which is a service that will come at a one-time fee. After it has been set up, you’ll have to fund it so as to be able to invest. If you have previously had a traditional IRA set up, or a 401k, or basically any other retirement account, you may be eligible for a rollover, i.e. for transferring funds from one of those accounts to your SDIRA, and that’s something that those precious metals companies will also help you with.
Funding the account is the final step prior to investing. Remember, though, there are other precious metals apart from gold you can go for. And, should you happen to get confused about which investment moves to make and which specific assets to buy, you can always talk to the company you’ve chosen as your partner and get their expert advice as help.