Although IRAs used to be limited to owning American Eagle gold and silver coins, IRAs can now invest in IRS-approved gold, silver, palladium, and platinum bars and coins. You can store coins or gold bars in a precious metal IRA. Despite the colloquial term “gold IRA,” you can hold silver, platinum, and palladium in this account. Adding precious metals to an IRA account may provide investors with additional diversification and growth opportunities.
However, there are very strict rules and regulations for precious metals investments with an IRA account. In fact, there are only certain gold, silver, platinum, and palladium products that are eligible for inclusion in an IRA account. Here we will outline the available products. When gold rises, you must also decide whether you would buy at or near the top of the market if you were to invest at that time.
Record gold sales combined with the appearance of many more companies processing and simplifying transactions have made investing in a gold IRA a one-stop shop. Unlike gold ETFs or gold company stocks, a precious metal IRA allows you to hold the physical precious metals in accordance with IRS regulations. One important rule to know about storing physical gold in an IRA is that your precious metals MUST be stored at an approved depository institution such as the Delaware Depository Service Company or Brink’s Global Services, not in your home or in a safe. The ability to use gold and other materials as securities in an IRA was introduced by Congress in 1997, according to Edmund C.
Many investors choose gold to diversify their portfolio by either investing in a gold IRA or buying the metal outright. A gold IRA also has similar tax benefits to a normal IRA, allowing interest to accrue tax-free until the owner is ready to retire. Since the American Gold Eagle is the only exception, gold bars to be included in an IRA account must have a minimum fineness of. Unfortunately, most Gold IRA companies don’t have a good record of fee transparency on their websites, so finding out the details may require a phone call or two.
Self-directed IRAs, which include Gold IRAs, have the same contribution and distribution limits, which depend on your age, as traditional IRAs. Some IRA companies guarantee that they’ll buy back the gold from you at current wholesale prices, but you could still lose money if you close the account, which is not usually the case when opening and closing regular IRAs. You then have to buy the approved gold or other precious metal and have it transferred to the custodian so that the custodian bank can book it, explains Moy. All products that fall outside these ranges, with the exception of American Gold Eagles, are not eligible for IRA contributions.
If that doesn’t matter to you, there are other ways to add exposure to precious metals to your retirement portfolio, such as buying stocks in gold mining companies. Since IRA owners are required to accept distributions when they reach 73 years of age, they could be forced to sell gold at a lower price than they would like.
