Investing
Gold and silver have been popular investments for centuries, safeguarding investor wealth through economic ups and downs. One of the most popular ways to invest in gold and silver today is through gold and silver IRAs.
If you’re not familiar with gold and silver IRAs, it’s probably because your financial adviser or retail brokerage doesn’t offer them. But a gold or silver IRA can be a powerful investment tool to build up and maintain your retirement savings.
Being wise with your investments is the best way to ensure that you’ll enter retirement in sound financial shape. If you’re interested in protecting your hard-earned wealth, keep reading to find out how a gold or silver IRA can help you.
Gold and silver IRAs function much like most other IRAs. Just like other IRAs, a gold or silver IRA requires you to choose a custodian to safeguard your gold and silver coins or bars.
Your responsibility as an investor is largely to the IRS, particularly at distribution time when you have to pay taxes on your gains. But once you elect to take a distribution, you can choose to take it either as cash or in physical metal, allowing you to keep holding your gold or silver once it’s no longer owned by your IRA.
Similar to other IRAs, gold and silver IRAs provide tax advantages, allowing you to invest your pre-tax earnings and defer taxation until distribution.
A custodian oversees the storage, safekeeping, and insurance of your gold and silver, ensuring the physical integrity of your investment.
These distinctive attributes of gold contribute to a robust demand and play a key role in sustaining its value.
With so much of the financial system today existing largely on paper or in computer systems, the appeal of tangible assets is greater than ever. So many investors think of the financial system today as a house of cards that is bound to come crashing down, so the thought of holding on to tangible assets that maintain their value is incredibly comforting.
From jewelry to coins to electronic components, gold has a variety of different uses. It remains in demand across the world as perhaps the single asset universally valued across all cultures.
Gold hasn’t always been the best asset for rapid wealth appreciation, as its growth in value is normally rather sedate. But over the past couple of decades gold has been one of the best investment assets around.
Gold’s real strength is in its ability to protect wealth during tough economic times. It’s during times of financial turmoil that gold really shines.
The worse inflation gets, the worse stock markets perform, and the slower the economy grows, the better gold performs. That’s why gold is such an important asset for investors to hold as a hedge against recession and inflation.
While silver often plays second fiddle to gold, its industrial demand and unique market dynamics make it a compelling investment.
There’s a lot more industrial demand for silver than for gold, so industrial uses play a larger role in silver’s price movements. One of the prime drivers of increasing industrial silver demand today is from the photovoltaic industry, i.e. solar panels. Other key industry items that rely on silver production include electric car batteries and medical equipment.
It helps that silver isn’t normally a primary product of mining. It’s often found as a byproduct of gold, nickel, or copper mining. And with mining worldwide becoming more difficult and more expensive, primary production of silver is set to decrease. Even with silver recycling helping to bridge the gap, supply shortages could also help lead to a higher silver price.
Both gold and silver IRAs fall under the category of self-directed IRAs, empowering you to be your own fiduciary. The process involves selecting a custodian for storage and a broker for purchases.
While you can’t add existing coins or bars to your IRA, you have the option to roll over funds from underperforming retirement accounts, providing an avenue for a fresh start. And that rollover can be done in just three easy steps.
Open a gold or silver IRA by signing an agreement to secure your purchase and understand Goldco’s terms of doing business. A Goldco representative will help you with every step of the process.
You can fund your new gold or silver IRA by rolling over existing assets from existing retirement accounts.
Once your IRA is funded, you can choose which precious metals you would like to have as part of it.
As with any other IRA, the same rules and restrictions apply. Distributions before age 59 ½ are assessed a 10% penalty, required minimum distributions must be taken after age 73, and annual contribution limits apply.
There are no limits, however, on the amount of money you can roll over from existing retirement savings into a gold or silver IRA.
Gold and silver often find their strongest performance when paper assets such as stocks and bonds are weakest, which is why gold and silver are becoming more and more popular in the current economic climate. Both gold and silver IRAs are seeing an influx of investors looking to take advantage of gold and silver’s ability to safeguard wealth.
Building on their popularity that took off in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, both gold and silver could be set for tremendous gains in the near future. With gold already having set all-time highs recently, it’s now silver’s time to shine.
The performance of gold and silver could help those who had the foresight to eschew the volatility inherent in stock markets and seek the stability that gold and silver can offer.
If you’re considering a gold or silver IRA, Goldco’s experts can help explain the process to you. With their assistance, you can navigate the steps to fortify your retirement savings, ensuring peace of mind and protection for your financial future.
Don’t wait—take the first step towards a secure retirement with a gold or silver IRA. Contact Goldco today!
This article was originally published in July 2019 and updated in April 2024.
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