When you direct your own retirement investing account, it’s easy to figure out what you do. You pick the assets you want to invest in. You strive to pick the best. You hold those assets, and make sure that when it comes to the rules of retirement investing, you stick to them. So, what do you need a Self-Directed IRA custodian for? A lot, it turns out. Below, we’ll tackle the various roles that a Self-Directed IRA custodian can do to help you administer the account in question, taking a lot of the administrative paperwork out of your hands and giving you peace of mind.

How a Self-Directed IRA Custodian Works

The first step is to understand the central role of a Self-Directed IRA custodian. When you establish your own Self-Directed IRA, you need a custodian to administrate the account, keeping it separate from your personal investments. It’s this arrangement that makes it possible for you to invest in a broader range of potential retirement assets. While most people are familiar with investing in pre-chosen stock funds within a retirement account, a Self-Directed IRA makes it possible for an investor to choose from a wide variety of potential asset classes. That includes precious metals, real estate, tax liens, private company stock, and more.

When you realize the potential benefits of asset diversification, you can then go about creating a Self-Directed IRA. However, to make sure that you administer the account properly, you’ll work through a custodian, who manages the account from an administrative perspective. What does this mean? It means that you need a third-party administrator who is capable of handling details like paperwork and carrying out the buy or sell orders you make. In other words, you need someone else who can handle the account without giving you investment advice. This is the Self-Directed IRA custodian, and their role ensures that you can have more power in retirement investing than you ever thought possible.

What are the Specific Roles of a Self-Directed IRA Custodian?

Let’s say you wanted to invest some of your retirement funds in precious metals. You might know a little bit about precious metal investing with a Self-Directed IRA. But do you know that you have to keep these metals stored in an insured approved depository, not at home? This is a key distinction, because it means that you keep the precious metals as a separate and protected part of a retirement account and not part of your personal holdings. It is this distinction that allows you to enjoy the tax benefits and protections that come with a retirement account.

This is easier to manage when you buy only stock funds, because it’s easy to keep those funds separate from other accounts you may own. However, with assets like real estate and precious metals, you’ll need a custodian to administer everything, make sure the paperwork is properly filed, and that your accounts are separate. This will give you peace of mind, knowing that you’ve handled all of your retirement investments the proper way.

A custodian is not someone who will give you financial advice; rather, they are an administrator who helps ensure the paperwork is squared away and you have everything you need to properly manage a Self-Directed IRA from a paperwork perspective. Want to know more about how it works? You’ll be pleasantly surprised to hear about how the process works, and how it ends up giving you more control over your retirement investments. Seek out more information with us here at American IRA by dialing our phone number at 866-7500-IRA.