How Does a Gold IRA Work, Exactly? - Investing Shortcuts

How Does a Gold IRA Work, Exactly?

By December 28, 2018Investing, Retirement
Everything You Need to Know About Gold IRAs

What’s The Best Way to Own Gold?

Most people who want to buy gold will usually take their retirement accounts and buy an ETF like GLD. They typically do this is because they do not know that there is another option when it comes to buying gold.

What if I told you that there is a better way to own gold, and it’s a way that millionaires have used for decades?

It’s Called a Gold IRA.

If you have a retirement account like an IRA, 401(k), or TSP (Thrift Savings Plan)*, you can take that account and roll it over into what they call a “self-directed IRA.” It is no different than a traditional IRA, or a SEP IRA, or even how your 401(k) account works. The only real difference is the fact that you have way more control over your money. It is still protected from taxes until you take distribution.

The millionaires do the exact same thing. They take their retirement account, and they roll it over into a self-directed IRA. Then they take the funds from the IRA and buy gold and or silver bullion coins with their IRA capital, resulting in actual physical gold and silver inside of their retirement account.

Do They Physically Hold Onto Their Gold And Silver?

They do not take possession of the physical gold or silver coins. That counts as a taxable event if they take possession of it. Instead they use a storage facility like Brink’s—which is a world-renowned, publicly traded safe and deposit company. The gold and silver coins are sent to one of these types of storage facilities. There are services other than Brink’s but they are probably one of the most popular options available.

The best part of a Gold IRA happens after the physical metals have been purchased and held inside of their retirement accounts. 

Once it is time to take distribution and there is physical gold and silver held in a safety deposit box in their name at a storage facility like Brink’s, they can actually take physical delivery of their gold and silver as a distribution.

This is huge.

Why? It is the only physical asset that you can take possession of through a distribution of your retirement account, instead of having to liquidate and take possession of cash.

Distribution in a Gold IRA vs. a Traditional IRA

Let me explain the conventional distribution process if you had an IRA or 401(k), owned stocks, and you wanted to take distribution. A lot of people own stocks, especially in their retirement accounts.

Let’s say it’s time for you to take a distribution. Maybe you’re over the age of 70 1/2, perhaps you just want to take distribution and you want to raise that capital. First, you have to sell that stock, convert it to cash, and then pay the tax on whatever the appreciation was while you’ve owned that stock before the money is sent to you. This is very common.

Inside of a Gold IRA, when you want to take distribution (which in the United States you can take distribution starting at 59 1/2), you can actually accept physical distributions of that gold and silver. 

Basically, you can take the distribution of gold and/or silver out of your Brink’s account, pay the taxes on the capital appreciation of gold while you’ve owned it, and then receive the physical metal at your home or wherever you direct them to send the bullion.

Why Does it Matter Where The Gold Goes?

This is so important because as of now, the stock market is at all-time highs. The dollar is teetering on another collapse, and there are very few places that you can put your money where it is going to be protected.

The biggest fear of someone who has retired is losing their assets or having some of their wealth taken away. For all of us, we saw what happened in 2008. When the stock market dropped 50%, millions of retirees saw their portfolios get wiped out by 50%, devastating millions of families and lives.

Well, we have not solved the problem, we have just produced a bigger monster by creating a super cycle caused by the expansion of our monetary debt to levels that we’ve never seen before. U.S. debt has never been greater than it is right now, and it’s growing every single day.

The government’s solution is to keep printing money every single day. This stress that we’re putting on our economy and on the financial markets is not only testing its abilities but eventually break the system.

I am not alone in this opinion; several world renowned economists not only believe, but say, “It’s a matter of when, not if our system breaks down.” If you are concerned about your retirement—if you want to protect your retirement—where are you going to go? What are you going to do?

A very logical and viable option is to invest in physical gold using your retirement account so that you can protect yourself from pending financial collapse from a complete system breakdown. If you’re interested in learning more about how a Gold IRA investment works, then take a minute and download this free guide that has been put together by Advantage Gold. They are the #1 trusted gold company by TrustLink in America. We have partnered with them to put together this shortcut on how you can use your retirement account to own physical gold to protect yourself from a complete financial meltdown.

Do yourself a favor, download this guide right now, and see if a self-directed Gold IRA makes sense for you.

*Additional qualified accounts typically include Traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP IRA, Simple IRA, TSP (Thrift Savings Plan), 401(K), 403(B), 457(B), Pension plan or Tax-sheltered annuity.

Jeremy Blossom

Author Jeremy Blossom

Jeremy Blossom has been building ideas to grow businesses for more than 15 years. For over a decade Jeremy was active in the financial industry and his understanding of the financial sector is vast and deep. Under his leadership, he delivers result-focused strategies and executions that are designed to do one thing: make clients more profitable.

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