Investing in Precious Metals for Your IRA: What You Need to Know

Are you looking for a way to diversify your retirement portfolio? Investing in precious metals may be the answer. A gold IRA, silver IRA, or other precious metal IRA is a type of self-directed individual retirement account that allows you to hold physical gold, silver, platinum, and palladium as investments within the account. However, these self-directed IRAs also allow you to invest in other unconventional assets, such as real estate and cryptocurrency. Before you open a gold IRA or other precious metal IRA, it's important to understand the IRS rules for these assets.

Gold, silver and other investment items must meet certain “finesse” requirements in order to be considered eligible assets in retirement plans. Augusta Precious Metals is a great gold IRA company for those looking for better prices and lower fees. When creating an entirely new IRA or transferring funds from an existing IRA or retirement plan, you can choose to pay all of the initial fees with IRA assets. You can also sell the gold or precious metals in your IRA at any time without taxes or penalties, as long as you don't withdraw the cash from your IRA.

Precious metal IRAs may be a viable option for some investors concerned about inflation and market volatility. A silver IRA is also a traditional IRA, a ROTH IRA, a SEP-IRA, a SIMPLE IRA, or an inherited IRA that is self-directed by the account holder and that has the permitted forms of physical silver coins or ingots. There is no limit to the number of direct transfers from one IRA to another that you can initiate. When investing in a precious metals IRA, it's important to remember that these metals should add some sparkle to your retirement funds, not become your entire investment strategy.

Since they involve buying and storing valuable physical metals, you should consider a few additional things when thinking about precious metal IRAs. Most major custodians, such as Charles Schwab, Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase, don't offer physical precious metals as an investment option.