What is a Gold IRA?

A Gold IRA or a Precious Metals IRA is a special type of individual retirement account (IRA) that allows you to invest in physical gold and silver in addition to the assets allowed in other IRAs. You can hold gold and silver bars and coins in your Gold IRA, as long as they meet certain requirements, and you’ll enjoy the same benefits as with Traditional or Roth IRAs.

Like other IRAs, the Gold IRA is a tax-advantaged account created to help investors save for their retirement. You can set up a Gold IRA with pre-tax dollars (like a Traditional IRA) or with post-tax dollars (Roth IRA) with the same advantages and disadvantages as either of those IRAs.

The Gold IRA, however, has one clear advantage over a Traditional IRA or a Roth IRA: Whereas typical IRAs limit your investment choices to stocks, bonds, and other paper assets, a Gold IRA allows you to invest in physical precious metals. By including physical gold in your investment portfolio, you will benefit from the protection and growth that gold offers.

With a Gold IRA, you enjoy the same tax benefits as you would with a Traditional IRA or a Roth IRA but with the added advantages of gold. The four main benefits of investing in physical gold are:

1. True diversification

The long-term success of your portfolio depends in large part on whether it is diversified and how. True diversification typically means that your portfolio contains assets that are uncorrelated or inversely correlated. Physical precious metals, such as gold and silver, are mostly uncorrelated with stocks and other mainstream assets that make up the typical portfolio. They have the ability to typically rise in value when traditional financial assets go down, thereby allowing the diversification that paper assets usually cannot. This level of diversification is critical for a portfolio to thrive in good times or bad.

2. Protection against inflation

Assets that are dollar-denominated, like stocks or bonds, depending on our currency system, our government, and the Federal Reserve. The Fed’s monetary policies of lowering interest rates and flat out printing money create inflation, which erodes the purchasing power of the dollar and suppresses your real wealth. These policies, however, cannot erode the intrinsic value of physical gold and silver, which means precious metals will help safeguard your retirement savings against inflation.

3. Protection against recessions and financial crises

The most important benefit of physical precious metals is their ability to defend your portfolio against economic turmoil. Physical gold and silver have repeatedly shown their strengths when our nation faced economic hardship, such as the oil embargo of 1973 or the Great Recession. During those times, when traditional assets imploded, precious metals not only stabilized investment portfolios but also helped them grow substantially.

4. Out of reach of the banking system

An often overlooked benefit of owning physical precious metals is the security in having an asset you can physically hold and that has no debt and doesn’t rely on the performance of a third party to provide it with value.

When you diversify into physical gold and silver, you also diversify out of the banking system and Wall Street, providing you with security against systematic failures, like the great crash of 1929, the tech bubble of 2000, or the Great Recession.

In today’s technological era, banks and other financial institutions are less secure than they used to be, which means your mainstream assets, such as bank savings, are at a higher risk of being compromised, hacked, or “frozen” by your bank. Doesn’t it make perfect sense to have a portion of your portfolio in physical gold and silver—real and tangible assets that you can store completely inaccessible to the banking system?

Conventional custodians such as banks and other financial institutions don’t give you the option to invest in physical precious metals — they simply don’t offer specialty accounts like Gold IRA accounts since they specialize in digitally traded assets. Instead, you need to work with a company (like us) and a custodian that specializes in dealing with alternative assets such as gold and silver. These custodians are experts in handling all the reporting for tax purposes and other compliance requirements.

At Gold Alliance, we have made the process as quick and easy as possible, and setting up a Gold IRA with us is a simple 3-step process:

1. Open
Our qualified IRA custodian will help you open your self-directed IRA.

2. Fund
In as little as 3 days, you can fund your new self-direct IRA. Simply transfer funds from your existing IRA, 401(k), or other retirement plan to your new account.

3. Select
You’re now ready to purchase physical gold and silver for your new IRA and enjoy the protection it gives to your retirement savings.

Throughout the process, your dedicated Senior Portfolio Manager is just a phone call or an email away to help you answer any questions. We’ll also set you up with an IRA expert that will help you take care of all the paperwork to ensure that the process of setting up your Gold IRA is as easy for you as possible. You can have peace of mind that you are in safe hands, just like you can have peace of mind that your retirement savings will be protected.

The IRS has set up specific purity requirements that gold products must meet to be IRA-eligible.

A wide variety of precious metals coins and bars are IRA-eligible and can be purchased from Gold Alliance for your Gold IRA. We will present you with the options for you to choose the gold products that are optimal for your needs and your financial goals. Our gold specialists are highly knowledgeable, friendly, and helpful. Speak with one of our specialists today and learn more about your IRA-eligible gold options.

Contributions to a Gold IRA follow the same rules as with any other IRA. so make sure you check with your advisor to make sure you aren’t exceeding that amount, especially if you’re contributing to other retirement savings accounts as well..

Your gold purchased within a Gold IRA will be shipped by us to an IRS-approved depository you choose. They will be in an account under your name, and you will have 24/7 access to your statements and holdings, just like you would with your paper asset in your IRA account. You could in many cases even visit your metals.

Most importantly, when taking a distribution, you can cash out your metals, but you can also have the metals shipped to your home. It’s your choice.

We recommend to all our clients that they use the Delaware Depository Services Company, whose vault in Wilmington, DE, handles billions of dollars worth of transactions on a daily basis. Delaware Depository also boasts a fully comprehensive insurance policy underwritten by Lloyds of London, one of the world’s oldest and most prestigious insurance providers. You can therefore be sure of unparalleled storage for the precious metals in your Gold IRA.

A Gold IRA must be held separately from other IRAs, and it is established by rolling over part of your existing IRA, 401(k), or other qualifying retirement account funds. Your Gold IRA therefore works in tandem with your existing accounts to create a diversified portfolio. Speak with one of our advisors to learn more about what retirement accounts are eligible to have a portion of their funds rolled over into a Gold IRA.