A gold IRA or precious metal IRA is an individual retirement account in which physical gold or other eligible precious metals are stored for the benefit of the IRA account holder. It works in the same way as a regular IRA, except that it holds physical investment coins or bars instead of paper assets. In a Gold IRA, you can hold real physical gold. It must comply with IRS standards and be held by the IRA trustee, not the IRA owner.
It must also be stored in an IRS-approved depot. Gold IRA rules require that you store suitable precious metals with a national depositary, bank, or an IRS-approved third-party trustee. Your custodian bank can refer you to an approved institution and handle the gold transfer as part of setting up your Gold IRA. If you’re interested in turning your traditional IRA’s funds into physical precious metals, you’ll need to decide how you want to store them before you fund a self-directed IRA.
There are easier ways to save for retirement with assets exposed to gold than buying physical precious metals yourself. Once you’ve decided that a Gold IRA is right for you, you can contact your retirement plan administrator to initiate the rollover, or let the Gold IRA company make a direct rollover between the two companies. If you have a Gold IRA, you incur costs for managing and maintaining the account, storing and insuring your gold. Once you’ve opened a self-directed Gold IRA, you can transfer cash to the account to fund your purchase of physical gold.
Precious metals such as silver and gold, platinum and palladium are considered a hedge against inflation and stock market volatility. Gold IRAs allow you to keep these precious metals in an individual retirement account. Some gold IRA companies describe their offerings as varied because you can include more than one type of precious metal in them. Simply put, top gold is the maximum rate of gold recovery worldwide. After that, mining will slowly decline until gold can no longer be mined profitably. A gold IRA or a custom precious metals IRA cannot contain any type of physical gold or precious metals.
A gold IRA works the same as any retirement account, with the added benefit of giving you more control over your investment, including physical gold coins and bars, and other silver, platinum, and palladium metals approved by the IRS. The IRS doesn’t allow popular gold coins, such as South Africa’s Krugerrand or the UK’s sovereign coins, to be held in a gold IRA. With your Gold IRA or Custom Precious Metals IRA, you’ll still have beneficiaries, receive quarterly statements, and you can sign up online to check your balance.
