Precious Metal IRA: How To Invest For Retirement With Gold And Silver By Kat Tretina, John Schmidt, Forbes
How Much of Your IRA Should Include Precious When the stock market gets rough, some investors seek Metals? out safe-haven investments like precious metals. While If you decide to invest in a precious metal IRA, you gold, silver and palladium are subject to their own should do so conservatively. Depending on your forms of volatility, many believe them to be superior financial situation, most experts recommend you invest long-term investment choices for retaining and growing no more than 5% to 10% of your retirement funds in value. precious metals. You can’t hold physical precious metal in a regular individual retirement account (IRA). However, there are specially designed precious metal IRAs that let you invest for retirement using gold, palladium, silver and other valuable metals.
What Is a Precious Metal IRA? A precious metal IRA is a special form of self-directed individual retirement account. Self-directed IRAs allow you to invest in a broad variety of unconventional assets, including precious metals, real estate and even cryptocurrency. These are beyond the usual options available in a conventional IRA, though they have virtually identical traits outside of this, including the same contribution limits.
The experts cite this low figure for a number of reasons. First, well-designed portfolios are diversified, which means they don’t take on unnecessary risk by investing strictly in one asset or type of asset. In other words, no trustworthy financial advisor would recommend that you invest all of your assets in precious metals. Second, while gold and other metals have historically held their value over the long term, they may lag the performance of other asset classes, such as stocks, especially when considering reinvested dividend growth. Those looking to continue growing their retirement funds, then, may shortchange themselves if they own too many precious metals.
Finally, keep in mind that these “safe haven” metals may not even be that safe. While investors flock to According to Kelli Click, president of the STRATA Trust them in times of trouble, they have been just as volatile Company—a self-directed IRA custodian that specializes as stocks historically. And though prices rise when the in gold and other metals—precious metal IRAs are an market struggles, they tend to fall once stocks recover. avenue some people use as part of their retirement Investments like high-quality bonds or Treasury plan because gold, silver and palladium have historically Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS), then, may be grown in value over the very long term. better options for those seeking security and inflation “Adding gold or precious metals to your retirement hedging. account may help protect your wealth in several ways, That said, if you want to include physical precious including reducing your potential investment volatility metals in your IRA, you have a few options. and risk, serving as a hedge in the event of an economic downtown and providing a tax-efficient shelter for What Precious Metals Can You Invest in for potential gains,” she says. Retirement? With precious metal IRAs, you can invest in gold, silver, Today’s BoomeR 19
