Choosing your Gold IRA company is the first step to opening your IRA. If you decide to invest in a precious metals IRA, you should do so conservatively. Depending on your financial situation, most experts recommend investing no more than 5 to 10% of your retirement savings in precious metals. Acceptable products that meet these criteria include Canadian Maple Leaf coins, Australian Koala investment coins, and PAMP Suisse bars.
The IRS also allows American Eagle coins even though they don’t meet the 99.5% purity standard for gold. You can’t currently hold rare or collectible coins, Swiss francs, British government bonds, and German marks in a self-governing IRA. Unless you have multiple retirement accounts, it would be very risky to convert your entire balance into a gold IRA. Another alternative is a gold ETF, an exchange-traded fund that tracks the performance of gold as an asset.
Most gold IRA companies recommend or require that you work with a specific custodian and custodian, although some give you a choice of two or more. The Gold IRA also sells you the gold bars and coins (or other precious metals) that you want to invest in your Gold IRA. They also make it easier to open your Gold IRA account, but they don’t provide investment advice, and you shouldn’t use the marketing material they publish as guidance in this regard. In fact, Augusta Precious Metals, one of the best gold IRA companies, specializes in helping people make just that choice.
Your
chosen Gold IRA company will help you get started by reaching out to your plan administrator with a request to transfer funds to your new Gold IRA. However, instead of holding paper assets such as stocks and bonds, the Gold IRA is intended to hold physical gold bars, i.e. coins or bars made from gold and other approved precious metals, including silver, platinum, and palladium. Remember that not every self-governing IRA custodian bank offers the same investment options. So make sure that physical gold is among their offerings before you open an account. If you want to hold physical gold in an IRA, the first step is to open a self-directed IRA (SDIRA), which you manage directly with a custodian bank.
Still, a gold IRA can be a good option for investors who want to diversify their retirement accounts and also take advantage of the hedging benefits that the yellow metal offers over other financial assets, such as fiat currency and stocks. If this isn’t a priority for you, there are other ways to add precious metals exposure to your portfolio in addition to a gold IRA. A gold IRA consists of a single asset class, and by eliminating the diversity you get with a traditional investment portfolio, you’re at higher risk and depriving you of the opportunity to earn income. Before you initiate the transfer, it’s important to calculate how much of your existing retirement savings you’d like to invest in your new Gold IRA.
They also perform the necessary administrative functions to ensure that your Gold IRA complies with all IRS regulations. To set up a Gold IRA, you’ll need to work with a Gold IRA company to set up an account and buy the precious metals of your choice to fund it.
