If you are self-employed you have the option of a Self-Directed SEP IRA, which stands for Simplified Employee Pension, for part or all of your retirement plan. In addition, a Self-Directed SEP IRA applies to small business owners, typically with up to 25 employees, who can also include a spouse, grown children, and other family […]
If you opted out of alternative investments and Self-Directed IRA approaches in favor of just taking long positions in conventional IRA investments, 2018 was not your year. Equities have had a great run: The bull market that started in March of 2009 – when everyone hated stocks and blood was running in the streets – […]
Experienced Self-Directed IRA investors know: You need to monitor your investments, and how they perform over time. This is true with any individual security, and it is true with a Self-Directed Real Estate IRA rental property: If you own a house as a Self-Directed Real Estate IRA investment, you would want to know, how is […]
You might believe that finding the best way to accumulate funds for retirement is difficult. Well, guess what? Withdrawing those funds is just as hard–if not harder–if you want to do it in a tax-savvy way. Failure to meet this challenge could result in you losing over half of your retirement money to income, estate, […]
Doing at least part of your long-term investing using a Self-Directed IRA has a number of important advantages: Opportunity for diversification. Most off-the-shelf retirement plans offered by Wall Street investment companies do not provide a way for you to access anything beyond stocks, bonds, funds and cash products. Some may offer annuities, but they are […]
In a widely-anticipated development, the Federal Reserve elected to increase interest rates for the fourth time this year. Alan Greenspan advised investors to head for the proverbial hills, but the selloffs began well before the rate hike as traders built their assumptions around the increasing certainty of the hike, and around some reduced assumptions about […]
It’s up! It’s down! It’s all around! The last couple of weeks on the stock market has been entertaining, if nothing else. But it is easy to maintain a healthy perspective on stock market volatility if one’s own retirement prospects are not hanging in the balance with every sickening swing in prices. And this underscores […]
As 2018 has come to a close, it is time for Self-Directed IRA investors to lay out a track to run on for 2019 – and ensure everything goes to plan as much as markets will allow. This means taking some concrete actions, both within your Self-Directed IRAs, in your retirement accounts, and from a […]
Probate is a long, frustrating and expensive process. It takes time for court probate officials to notify and sort through all the potential creditors’ claims, deal with unpaid tax liability and track down all the heirs. It is expensive, too: All these court officials and clerks need to be paid, and with probate costs sometimes […]
Many business owners want to combine the tax advantages and flexibility of Self-Directed IRA investing with the higher contribution limits available in employer-sponsored plans. The Self-Directed SIMPLE IRA is a common and popular variant of the IRA designed for small businesses with 100 or fewer employees who do not want to go through the trouble […]