RMDs must start within the year you turn 70½ and must be taken by December 31 each year. However, the original RMD can be postponed to April 1 of the year following the calendar year. IRA owners are responsible for taking the right amount of RMDs on time each year, otherwise they face heavy penalties if they don’t. Your self-directed IRA calculates your annual RMD amount and makes it available to you annually.
Roth IRA owners don’t have to take RMDs. A gold IRA is a specific type of individual retirement account called a self-directed IRA. It is similar to a traditional IRA, which could hold stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. A self-managed IRA offers the same tax benefits as a traditional IRA, but allows you to hold precious metals and other alternative assets in accordance with IRS regulations.
Buying a gold IRA should be part of your comprehensive financial strategy for retirement (or outside of a retirement account), which you’ve carefully formulated yourself with the help of your own financial professionals. If you feel pressured to buy a Gold IRA for any reason, you might want to keep looking for a better company. There are a few things you should consider before you decide to convert your savings into a gold IRA. Physical gold wasn’t always an investment option for retirement savers who wanted to benefit from an IRA.
With a traditional gold IRA, you can transfer your income directly to your standalone account before you pay taxes on it. It’s important to remember that the IRS only allows you to deposit a certain amount of your income into your IRA each year. It works in a similar way to a traditional IRA and offers the same tax benefits — but with the added ability to hold precious metals, which is often used as a hedge against inflation and economic uncertainty. Another alternative is a gold ETF, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the performance of gold as an asset.
Gold IRAs are very common these days, but traditional financial advisors still generally don’t provide their clients with any information about them. It’s up to you and your financial, tax, and legal experts to come up with a plan that works for you, with physical gold (and maybe even silver) providing the ballast that could help you hold on to more of your money until you retire. It’s not too complicated, but setting up a Gold IRA account requires a few key steps. However, there are specific rules for the types of gold and precious metals you can invest in with a self-directed IRA.
If you want to hold gold outside of a retirement account (which means you can keep it at home), here’s more information on how to buy gold outside of an IRA. A specialist Gold IRA provider (often referred to as a “Gold IRA company”) knows all the ins and outs of setting up and running this type of account. So it’s good that there are so many resources available to teach you more about physical, self-managed retirement plans like Gold IRAs.
