The Self-Directed IRA is a popular way for investors to bring tax benefits to alternative styles of investing, including real estate, precious metals, private company stock, and even cryptocurrencies. But despite the trouble in the stock market as of late, is this really a popular style of investing? After all, just how many investors use a Self-Directed IRA? We decided to dive into the statistics to see what we could find.

How Many Investors Use Self-Directed IRAs?

If you look back at our blog on Self-Directed IRA statistics, you’ll remember that there aren’t too many statistics that report exactly what investors are doing with their retirement money. But we were able to find some key statistics that help explain what’s going on:

• There is 12.3 trillion dollars worth of assets in retirement money—but that’s as of 2020-2021 or so. We’ve seen since then that there have been disruptions in the economy due to inflation, supply chain issues, and COVID-19.
• One of the most popular ways for people to invest is “other.” In other words, many people who invest look for alternative asset classes to add some diversification and heft to their portfolio.

There aren’t very widely available statistics about Self-Directed IRAs that explicitly lay out the trends for whether more and more investors are hopping on board with this alternative style of investing. But one thing is clear—maybe we should stop calling it an “alternative” style of investing. After all, many investors view real estate as a keystone asset class for building a solid retirement fund. Others may view holding gold or silver within a portfolio as a must-have. It ultimately comes down to your own choices—what you want to see in your retirement account. And ultimately, you have to do what’s best for you.

The Popularity of Investing that Matches Your Needs

The traditional style of investing is often tied to one’s employer. For example, an investor might have an employer-sponsored retirement plan, which only offers a select group of funds from which the investor can choose. This creates steady investment growth when choosing the right investments—but sometimes, the brokerage can eat into that growth via fees. Alternatively, investors might not like the lack of choice they have when it comes to selecting retirement assets.

The alternative, of course, is to use a Self-Directed IRA by working directly with a Self-Directed IRA custodian like American IRA.

Investors use Self-Directed IRAs to invest in assets they choose. They do this while still taking advantage of the tax benefits like traditional IRAs. In order to do this, investors open a special type of IRA account that allows them to purchase and manage investments such as real estate, precious metals, private equity, and cryptocurrency. This type of account gives investors greater control over their money, allowing them to make more informed decisions about where to allocate their funds.

This is one reason that many investors might view the approach to Self-Directed IRA investing as being more advantageous. We can’t say for certain how many investors have taken on this approach in recent years. The statistics are large-scale and select form large samples of the population. But one thing is clear: if you want to invest this way, you’re the only Self-Directed IRA investor you need to be concerned with.

Are you interested in learning more? It may be time to stop trend-following and time to start looking for ways to branch out on your own. You can read more here at our website, or give us a call at 866-7500-IRA to learn about the process of investing with a Self-Directed IRA.