Being financially prepared for retirement is one of the biggest goals for pretty much everyone, and it is a task that takes years to complete, years of investing and saving. People add all sorts of assets to their portfolios in an effort to save and build their wealth. Because stocks and bonds can be quite volatile, due to market changes, a lot of individuals are deciding to switch to gold and other precious metals, or to at least add them to their accounts together with the stocks and bonds, in an effort to protect their wealth against inflation and other economic instabilities.
If you’ve been researching the idea of backing up your savings with gold as well, then you’ve figured out that this is done through a self-directed Individual Retirement Account, and you’ve probably also researched the process of setting it up, the IRA fees related to this, the storage options and numerous other things. This has also made you realize that you’ll need to work with a great gold IRA company if you want to set everything up the right way and make the correct investment moves. What you’re still confused on, though, is whether backing up your savings with gold is actually a good idea.
Should You Back Your Retirement Savings With Gold?
If you have a conversation with any investor who has already done this, they’ll immediately tell you that it is one of the smartest things they’ve done for their portfolios. They’ll explain how it all works and go into the specifics regarding their own accounts, possibly even the percentage of their savings that’s in precious metals, the types of metals they’ve bought, and practically anything else that could give you a closer idea on how all of this works. So, judging by their specific experiences and by the things they will tell you, an easy conclusion can be made. Backing your retirement savings with gold is definitely worth doing.
Why?
That’s not enough, though, for you to be absolutely sure that you’d be doing a great thing if you chose to add gold to your portfolio. You still want and need to know why this is actually such a good idea. Well, first things first, gold’s value is always stable and it doesn’t have the tendency of flopping – the tendency that most stocks and bonds have, putting your entire portfolio at risk. This asset will remain stable even if there’s great turmoil in the economic situation of the world, and even if inflation gets extremely high. In fact, its value tends to increase as inflation increases, meaning that it behaves differently than some other asset classes you can add to your portfolio, including bonds and stocks.
So, basically, holding a portion of your savings in gold is like buying insurance for your retirement savings. If a certain company, the stocks of which you’ve bought, goes out of business for some reason, its stocks will lose their value and potentially be worth zero. Something like that cannot happen with gold, as it can’t go out of business, so to speak. It can never be worth zero, and if history has taught us anything, then it’s that gold will remain valuable no matter what happens on the market.
By setting up a self-directed IRA, the account that you can use to invest in gold, you’ll gain full control over all of your assets. You’re in control of the asset mix, not restricted to holding only those traditional assets and not locked into a preset asset group by your custodian. While you’ll still need to have a custodian, you’ll have better command of what goes in your portfolio and thus more flexibility to diversify. This gives you more control over the risks you’re assuming and over your entire financial future.
Tax advantages are another reason why backing your portfolio with gold is a good idea. You’ll receive the same tax advantages as with your conventional IRAs, and your contributions may be claimed as tax-deductible. Gold owners can actually increase their after-tax returns through their SDIRAs, which is basically another great benefit you can expect to get if you set up this account and add gold to it. The only question now is how to do it.
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How To Do It?
If you’ve decided to back your retirement savings with gold, you’ll need to know which steps to take towards it. Clearly, you need a self-directed Individual Retirement Account for this to be possible at all, but that’s not the only thing to do. In fact, it’s not even the main thing to do. Prior to setting up the account, you’ll need to find a gold dealer to cooperate with, i.e. a company that will sell you the actual assets you’re aiming at buying. That company will do much more for you, though.
It will also help you set up that account you need to have to make the investments to begin with. Additionally, you can get storage services from the company you’ll select, and you’ll even get some investment advice should you wind up needing it. Funding your SDIRA can be another complicated process if you’re planning on doing a rollover, and the company you’ll choose will help you do this as well. They have a wide array of services to offer, so you can get the ones you need. Naturally, the services come at certain fees, but that’s to be expected, and when you choose a great company, the fees will also be reasonable.
After you’ve chosen the right company for you and after you’ve set up the account and funded it, the next step will be to start investing. If you’re new to the precious metals world and and you don’t know how to properly back your retirement savings with gold, you can always get advice from the firms you’re cooperating with. The key is in being wise with the investments and to buy at the right time, i.e. when the prices are lower.
