Most people don’t know it, but their retirement account can be a multi-use tool to invest in a wide variety of options outside of just equities, bonds, certificates of deposit, and mutual funds. The large majority of people who have retirement accounts simply let their company plan manage their money for them without knowing what they are investing in, other than “the market.” Other folks depend on a family friend or relative in the form of a financial advisor to manage their retirement savings accounts in hopes of a great outcome one day.
Today I’m going to share with you my retirement plan. I’m Tim Schmidt, of IRAInvesting.com, a website about retirement investing. Years ago, I decided to move my money away from a typical broker and money manager relationship and change it over to a self directed IRA plan. A self directed IRA plan allows me to have money that I allocate towards retirement do many different things, under my direction, but housed under the legal guardianship of custodians.
What a Self Directed IRA Allows You to Invest In
The cool thing about a self directed plan is that it allows you to invest in whatever you feel is something that could grow during the course of your aging. I just turned 40 myself, and see things like precious metals as a nice safe haven to invest in that will definitely be a nice hedge against inflation over the next number of years.
Additionally, I can also trade my own equities with my self directed IRA. As an active investor, I keep my pulse on the market and constantly swing trade. Once you know a stocks trading range, you can make quick trades to the tune of large percentage gains and grow your retirement much quicker. To me, a financial advisor has too much going on, and too many clients to manage, to keep an eye on things like that for every client. I’d like to be a bit more active with money, and having my own trading account, all housed in my retirement plan, is one way I can do that.
Another way I can use my money is to invest in things like real estate. You can buy and sell houses inside your retirement plan as well as trade equities and invest in precious metals. Imagine doing this with a Roth IRA plan that doesn’t have any tax liabilities at the time it is due for withdrawal? The amount of tax free money to be made on real estate gains is huge, and not paying taxes on that is a huge advantage versus paying for it every year like most people typically do when they file taxes and pay gains on selling properties.
Lastly, with the world of cryptocurrency being very real, there is a way that you can also trade bitcoin and other alt coins in your retirement plan. The “bitcoin ira” is becoming something that people are using to trade cryptocurrency under many different self directed IRA custodians.
At the end of the day, you can control your own destiny in terms of managing your money for your retirement. You just have to set up a self directed IRA account and comply with the legal paperwork that goes along with it.
