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Why Invest In A Self Directed IRA

By Carolyn Russell


When investing for retirement, people often have three main objectives. First, they want to preserve their savings. Secondly, they want to grow their savings. Lastly, they want to pay as little tax as possible. Unfortunately, most retirement plans expose savers to a lot of risk, mainly the volatility of the markets. A self directed IRA, however, seems to be the exception.

If there is something that people learned from the financial crisis of 2006-2008, it must be that IRA and 401k trustees as well as stock brokers and fund managers do not know any better than them. People who were going to retire lost their money as the stock market crashed. This forced people to start thinking of ways to prevent the same problem from recurring.

When you open a self-directed IRA, you will be in charge of choosing investments to put your money in. This means you may invest in anything you want. With traditional IRAs, the fund manager normally picks assets for clients.

Through this type of retirement account, the investor can buy REITs or physical real estate property with their savings. If you are comfortable with precious metals, you can buy physical gold and silver or the stocks of precious metal companies you may know of. Basically, you can invest your savings in any type of asset that you know very well.

Please note that you cannot derive any personal gain from assets owned in an IRA before the account matures. For instance, you cannot decide to live in a property bought with IRA money. If you rent a house to third parties, the rent must go to your account, not your pockets.

If precious metals are your thing, you can buy gold and silver with your retirement savings. However, you must find a licensed custodian to help you keep the gold. You cannot keep these precious metals at home or at the bank in a safe as this may be taken to be a withdrawal.

It is important to note that this type of account gives the investor complete control over their retirement savings. They can team up with friends and relatives to invest in bigger assets with higher returns. For instance, they can invest in a multi-story commercial property in a strategic location for retirement purposes.

The key to protecting your portfolio from the volatility of the market and inflation lies in diversifying your portfolio. By spreading your portfolio across the different asset classes you are comfortable with, you can minimize your risk. If one asset class does not perform well, another class will cover the loss.

You can free-up a lot of money by choosing to manage your own individual retirement account. This is because you will not pay any brokerage or account management fees. The savings can be reinvested and used to increase the value of your portfolio further.




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