World Magazine 2024
Nowadays, people appreciate the need to invest in various investment vehicles. Most people know that retirement needs enough funds to live their days comfortably, and their 401(k) may not be enough to last them. Now comes the individual retirement account (IRA) through precious metals. Since precious metals like gold are good avenues to protect the value of a retiree’s hard-earned money, more people are now into gold IRA.
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What Is A Gold IRA?
Aside from your traditional IRA, you need to acquire a gold IRA if you want to hold or invest in physical gold for your retirement. Some call it precious metal IRA but it works like a standard retirement account wherein the same distribution and contribution limits apply. The difference is that you’re investing or holding physical gold like bars, bullions, or coins instead of the traditional bonds, stocks, and other paper assets. The best thing about a gold IRA is you can also hold gold exchange-traded funds (ETFs), stocks, or mutual funds. Thus, making your gold IRA more diversified.
Reasons To Have Gold IRA
There are many reasons why many investors are into gold IRA. Aside from gold prices having the opposite direction in cases of economic downfall, there are other reasons you may want to consider:
1. Grow The Value Of Your Money
Gold IRA allows you to grow your money over time aside from giving you a sense of security and peace. Since gold increases its value in the long run, putting your hard-earned money into a gold IRA means securing its value even if the value of money decreases due to inflation. That’s the main reason many investors use gold as a hedge against inflation. For example, if you have a piece of gold worth USD$20 in the 1900s, its worth now is around USD$1,800 per ounce. Not only have you preserved the value of your USD$20, but you were also able to grow it.
On the other hand, if you have let it sit in the bank, your USD$20 may have been eaten by bank fees. Or if it’s still existing, the value of your USD$20 may not be enough to sustain your retirement needs. But with a gold IRA, you can get the most of your hard-earned money when you retire.
2. Use It As An Effective Hedge
In addition, not only are you growing your money’s worth, but a gold IRA can be an effective hedge against other investment’s downfall as well. For example, paper assets like stocks can go into bear markets during an economic crisis. If you’re unlucky to retire during economic downfalls, you may have no choice but to sell your stocks at a lower price. Hence, the loss on your part.
But if you have a gold IRA aside from your paper assets, you can prevent selling the latter at a lower price. As mentioned, gold prices tend to have opposite direction with other investment markets because gold prices are not likely to go low by a country’s economic crisis.
Therefore, when all of your investments are down, you can use gold to balance your retirement portfolio. Or you can use it to finance your retirement days even when your country is in a crisis. It also means that your retirement fund won’t be devalued because you’ve invested it in gold.
Tips In Finding The Best Gold IRA Company
The benefits you get from your gold IRA don’t come that easy. It’s because you also need to consider the gold IRA company that you’ll invest in. This company will handle your retirement investment from rolling over your traditional IRA—buying, storing, and selling your gold investments.
In case you’ve worked with a bad gold IRA company, you may not grow your retirement investment. And worse, you may lose your assets when you chance upon a crooked company. You can avoid all of these when you do your due diligence in finding a good gold IRA company. Thus, you may want to consider the following tips:
1. Research Gold IRA Companies
Before contacting each gold IRA company, you must do your research first. Understand what and how it can benefit you. You also need to know about the company that will handle your gold IRA account. That way, you can find a reliable organization to protect and grow your retirement assets.
The internet has all the answers, as they say. Use this to your advantage to know what people are saying about a gold IRA company. It may also help if you find third-party review sites that may have done in-depth research about them. By reading those reviews, you can get an idea of what to expect from them—like how this review talks about a specific gold IRA company.
While doing your research, you may want to check the following warning signs:
- Paid Reviews: Since many articles will pop on your search engine results when you type ‘review about (name of the gold IRA company),’ you need to check whether they’re paid ones. A paid review may be biased because these are from affiliate websites. This means they get paid for doing a review about the company or get a commission when you set up an account with the company via their article. Thus, you should check for reputable review sites as they’re more likely to state both pros and cons of a company, unlike paid reviews that only focus on the positive sides
- Negative Customer Feedback: Also, check for negative reviews from previous clients. Although you may want one that doesn’t have negative feedback, that may not be possible for legit companies. Most companies may possibly have at least one or two negative reviews. What’s important is to check how the company responded to the customer or how they solved such issues. That way, you can weigh if it’s the customer or the company’s fault. However, if all the feedback and rating is bad, you may take this as a red flag: keep away and find another.
- Unlicensed Companies: Most importantly, you should check if a company has a license to operate. If they are, then reviews will immediately state in their articles that the company is licensed. With such, they may have passed the state’s requirement to operate a business.
2. Personally Check The Companies
After checking their online reputation, you must not forget to personally contact your prospect gold IRA companies. Learn more about them directly. Similar to buying jewelry where you physically check its quality, calling or contacting these companies let you experience whether the online reviews are real.
When you interact with these companies, it’s also best to ask them questions to verify their online reputation. Not only that, but you can also clarify how their service is and what you can expect from them. Hence, here are some questions you may have to ask them:
Q: In case I need to encash my gold, would it be possible to sell it back to you?
By asking this question, you’ll know whether you can easily sell your gold or have to look for buyers. If they buy back the gold, ask them whether they follow the current market price on the day you have to sell it. That way, you won’t fall to companies buying back their gold but at a much lower current market price. However, you should also note that there’s no law requiring the company to buy back the gold you acquired from them.
Q: How long will you deliver my gold after setting up my gold IRA?
If you’re acquiring physical gold, make sure that the company will not deliver it after months. Especially if you’ll be acquiring more than thousands worth of physical gold, the company must consider giving you a high-quality service.
Q: What do you recommend for my gold IRA?
When they only offer you a few options, it may mean they have a limited type of gold at hand. Thus, you may want to check the ones with more options so you can diversify your gold IRA. Moreover, suppose they offer recommendations and reasons behind such. In that case, it may mean they understand gold investments as compared to those who may not be able to provide explanations.
When asking these questions, it’s best to take note of how the representatives deal with you. The tone of their voice, the length of their answers, and how they listen may indicate whether they’re customer-centric or not.
For example, if they get irritated when you ask them a lot of questions, they may also do so in the future. Of course, you wouldn’t want that as you need someone to assist you throughout your entire contract with them.
3. Verify Their Fees
Lastly, it would help if you don’t forget to ask how much they charge, including hidden charges. Some companies may only be posting low prices for their services but may charge you more because of ‘extra’ services. That’s why you should ask them what the inclusions are for such fees.
Ask about commissions if they could sell your gold or other extra fees when you ask for their help. Setup fees may be a one-time fee, but check additional fees like storage, maintenance fees, and miscellaneous fees. That way, you’ll know what services to expect at such a price.
Conclusion
Setting up a gold IRA account may be one of the best investments for your future, but do it with a reputable company. By considering the following tips above, you can reap the benefits of your gold IRA account. Since there are many gold IRA companies out there, it’s best to do your research before jumping to the first company that pops in your search engine. By doing your due diligence, you can grow and secure your retirement fund.
