Gold and silver IRAs offer a unique alternative to traditional retirement plans because you can add precious metals such as gold coins, silver, platinum, and palladium. These precious metal IRAs have become increasingly popular in recent years as uncertainty about the health of the global economy grows. Gold IRAs are individual retirement accounts that store physical gold as an investment instead of traditional stocks and bonds. Either way, to allow investments in alternatives such as real estate and precious metals, you can transfer all or part of your 401 (k) balance to a self-managed IRA to use the same pre-tax funds for your
investments.
Storing your IRA metals at home could put the IRA account holder at significant risk of IRS penalties. Custodian banks that offer a CheckBook IRA structure usually recommend that their customers store the IRA metals in a safe deposit box. This is usually done using a transfer, which is first signed by the account holder and then sent by the receiving custodian to the releasing custodian, requesting a partial or full transfer of IRA funds or assets. A precious metal IRA is simply a traditional, ROTH, SEP, SIMPLE, rollover, or inherited IRA that owns precious metals and may contain gold, silver, platinum,
or palladium.
If you’re interested in setting up such an account, you’ll need to look for a specialized custodian or company that is able to handle all the documentation and reporting for tax purposes required to maintain a Gold IRA. A rollover usually occurs when you transfer between two different accounts, such as from a 401 (k) to an IRA. A custodian can be a bank, a credit union, an escrow, a brokerage firm, or a popular gold IRA company such as Birch Gold Group or Oxford Gold Group. Traditional gold IRAs, Roth and SEP gold IRAs are subject to contribution limits, just like their counterparts, which
have nothing to do with gold.
You can also make annual contributions to your IRA based on limits set by your IRA category and age. Gold IRAs help diversify a person’s retirement account and serve as a hedge against specific financial factors. The term gold IRA refers to a specialized individual retirement account (IRA) that allows investors to hold gold as a qualified retirement plan. However, many IRA holders use what they believe to be a “loophole” in the US tax code that allows the account holder to store the metals themselves using a “checkbook check IRA,” an LLC IRA, or a “home storage IRA.”
You’ll need a broker to buy the gold and a custodian to create and manage the account to get started.
