Expert Answers About Gold IRA Companies & Precious Metals Investing

Gold IRA companies specialize in helping you decide the best strategies to enhance your retirement portfolio with precious metals. Choosing to invest in precious metals or converting your retirement account are decisions that more people are making because of the economic uncertainties of savings and other types of investments. Investing always carries risks, but precious metals—especially gold—have always performed well for investors, provided hedges against inflation and paper-asset collapses and served as mediums of exchange in challenging emergency situations. Deciding to invest in gold or precious metals offers many options and benefits for wise investors in today's economic mood, and you don't need to have a fortune to begin. The best advice about investing is to take things slowly, research the gold and metals markets, understand how to convert your 401K or IRA assets to gold IRAs and gather information about precious metals investment vehicles and investment companies from numerous reliable sources. Forward-thinking investors—both big and small—choose gold investing as the best standard of financial opportunities. Fears of inflation, currency fluctuations and government misuse of finances ignite investors' fears, but gold investing seems to occupy the rarefied atmosphere of worry-free investing because the commodity provides so many benefits and attractions. Getting Started: What I should know before contacting Gold IRA Companies You should always perform what lawy gold ira companies reviewed

ers call due diligence before investing in any commodity or entrusting funds to third parties. Precious metals have a stunning and consistent track record, but investing your hard-earned funds always generates some risks and raises questions that you need answered before committing. Some questions are generic about metals investing while others involve choosing a company to handle your investing strategy. Generic questions include the following issues:

Will Your Savings Be Safe with Gold IRA Companies? Nobody can predict the future with 100% certainty, but gold has always delivered a solid return on investment when compared with other investing strategies. You can keep pace with inflation and probably earn premiums on your investment dollars if history is any indication of future market performance. Investors who invested in gold only 10 years ago have enjoyed 400% to 500% returns.
Once Your Gold is in Storage, Can You Take it Out? You determine what happens to your gold by choosing the right storage option and investment account. If you are investing in a gold IRA, then you are required to place the gold under a custodian's protection. However, you can rollover the account or take physical possession of your gold with certain restrictions that involve satisfying the IRS. If you have your own gold or precious metals, you can arrange for allocated or unallocated storage with a third-party vendor. If the metals are allocated, you can withdraw generic gold and metals of equal value. You need to register your metals if you want to ensure precious heirlooms or specific bars of gold, silver or palladium are returned to you.
Will The Government Ever Confiscate Your Gold Savings? The confiscation of gold is a real possibility in the world because gold represents real wealth that the government might need for national security. Franklin Roosevelt confiscated gold, and it could happen again. Today, however, governments prefer to confiscate citizen wealth by using inflation to devalue their investments and cash reserves. Regardless of government action, gold confiscation is likely to be the last measure your government would take, so you would get some warning signs to move your gold somewhere out-of-reach.
How Does Gold Compare with the U.S. Dollar? Each financial asset is based on relative value, and the U.S. dollar is the reserve currency for the world's leading financial investments. Unlike other investments, gold has intrinsic value as a commodity, manufacturing material and component of jewelry and precious objects. Gold rises in value when the U.S. dollar weakens and loses value when the dollar is strong. Sensible investing involves recognizing this basic relationship and diversifying investments to maintain equilibrium. You can invest in multiple investment vehicles, including IRAs, to meet your financial goals.
Pros and Cons of Rolling-over Your 401K/IRA into Gold: Understand that rolling-over your 401K or IRA will generate some expenses in buying and securing the gold. If you have taken your money out of your IRA, you might face penalties unless you place your funds in a new account within certain time limits. Of course, you can convert your traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, but you can only transfer funds directly between the same type of accounts.

Converting your retirement accounts is easy, even if you still work for the same employer. You face income restrictions on your current-year investment totals if transferring funds to traditional IRAs. Roth conversions make sense if you think that your future income will be higher because you can enjoy tax-free income. Understand the total expenses involved in converting your assets, and shop competitively among gold IRA companies, storage facilities and custodians. Looking at matters from an investor's perspective, the sooner you convert to gold and/or precious metals, the safer your retirement will be. Global economic crises, uncertain economies, inflation and terrorist threats generate great financial uncertainty, but physical gold protected by a reliable custodian offers one of the safest investments available for retirement in uncertain times.

Digging Deeper: What should I ask Gold IRA Companies

Choosing to invest in gold is a relatively safe decision, but wise investors understand that the only problem for this investing strategy is choosing the right partnership with a trusted precious metals company. Before choosing to invest in any metals product or gold IRA, you should ask the following questions:

What are your ratings from the Better Business Bureau, TrustLink and other consumer watchdog groups?Find out whether gold IRA companies have had lots of complaints and if they try to resolve customer service issues quickly.
Find out if the company offers educational resources about precious metals investing and whether they push only one of two particular types of products.Gold investing companies are competitive, but trustworthy companies offer an even-handed approach to investing that doesn't push one product at the expense of others. Companies can express preferences for gold or silver but shouldn't suggest coins over bullion.
Ask about IRA-investing details, what products are available and which of these can be used for IRAs.Knowledgeable companies will provide satisfactory answers that explain these issues in ways you can easily understand.
Ask about any upfront costs, maintenance fees, transfer fees and restrictions.Reliable companies will give you transparent prices, issue guaranteed delivery deadlines and generally provide professional service at the highest level.

Gold IRA Companies Reviews Determine Our Best Recommendation

Based on the above criteria and an exhaustive study of consumer-group ratings, customer testimonials, years of experience and comprehensive analyses of investing services, our examination results in recommending Goldco. Although several companies meet all essential standards, our highest rating goes to Goldco because of the company's incredible history of serving a volatile community of investors with distinction.

Goldco Scores the Highest in Every Category

Goldco scored highly in every category we used for assessing precious metals companies. The company clearly care about its reputation with the public and goes to extraordinary lengths to protect its image, provide customer service and satisfy clients who include inexperienced investors, savvy precious metals experts, survivalists and conservative talk-show celebrities. Satisfying such a diverse clientele for many years without statistically significant complaints indicates how well Goldco does its job of advising clients on precious metals investing and delivering low-cost, transparent pricing for its metals. The company responds to customers by phone, email and in-person consultations. Offices are open Mondays through Fridays from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., PST. Reasons why we choose this dealer above the others include the following criteria: 1. Seven-day Delivery Guarantee The company delivers physical gold with premium grading and appropriate security within seven days. The company willingly buys back gold at market prices when customers want to liquidate their holdings. 2. Education Goldco offers informative investor kits, online information for research, personal answers to questions and prompt resolutions of any misunderstandings. The company helps clients establish self-directed IRAs with minimal administrative costs and flat fees. 3. Reputation All the major business-rating websites give the company top ratings because of its business history, lack of complaints and prompt attention to consumer concerns. The company's track record includes:

Perfect BBB rating
Perfect score from the Business Consumer Alliance
Highest rating from TrustLink
Multiple endorsements that include celebrities and average investors
Uninterrupted history of customer service – Special help for first-time metals buyers
Good product selection that includes coins, bullion and IRA accounts
Flat storage fees of $250 per year, regardless of how much metal is stored
Competitive prices, fast delivery of metals, prompt attention to customer concerns and friendly, unbiased investing advice

4. Customer Service Customers get reliable advice from the company's website, investors' kits and responses to questions, even if the advice doesn't provide the company with new sales opportunities. Goldco takes the long view that gold and precious metals are sound and safe investments that will eventually attract those serious investors who have received accurate information from the dealer's expert team of advisers. Gold and precious metals offer strong hedges against inflation, crashes in paper-asset values and other financial risks in today's financial climate. Investors who have bought gold have done exceedingly well for centuries, and you can reduce investing risks by choosing a reliable dealer and adviser, investigating multiple investment possibilities and diversifying your investments including your retirement accounts. We give Goldco our top rating as the company most likely to offer you the fewest dealer risks. gold vs s&p 500

How to Research Precious Metals Investing

Precious metals offer tax advantages, shield portfolios from inflation and hedge investments against monetary collapses, but like all investments, some precautions are necessary to minimize risks and maximize returns. The following steps will help you understand how to incorporate precious metals in your overall investment strategy:

Research the benefits and disadvantages of gold. Benefits include the facts that gold has inherent artistic and industrial value, the world's supply of gold is finite, government monetary policies inflate prices when more money is printed, and lack of faith in currency leads to increases in gold prices. Disadvantages of gold investing include possible discoveries of unexpected metals reserves that could devalue prices, protecting physical gold and getting cheated by scams and unethical investing schemes.
Explore investment vehicles. Gold has clear advantages for the investor, but other metals might provide similar or better returns. Gold offers the advantages that it is universally recognized, once supported U.S. currency and is currently needed for electronics components, jewelry and artistic objects. However, silver, platinum, and palladium also have many of these industrial and decorative uses, so savvy investors can balance their portfolios by investing in various metals.
Evaluate investing options. You can invest in precious metals, mining stocks, ETFs, mining-support stocks, index funds, mutual funds, coins, and physical gold in art, jewelry and pure bullion. When investing in coins or artistic items, you need to compare the raw value versus the intrinsic value.
Establish ways to monitor your investment to respond to events. Smart investors monitor and respond to price fluctuations to correct their investments, buy stocks that balance their portfolios and check the fees and performances of their long-term holdings to identify opportunities and needs to modify investing strategies. You need software to handle these tasks reliably, or you need to choose a reliable broker, investment company or precious metals trader to handle these matters for you.

Advantages of Gold Investing

Gold, silver and other precious metals provide profitable ways to invest without understanding a great number of things about the financial markets. If you decide to invest in coins, you should learn something about the market, which coins the U.S. government accepts in precious metals IRAs and possible coin scams that push low-quality coins at premium numismatic prices. Simplified gold investing in bullion, ETFs and IRAs eliminates many of these concerns for the beginning investor. Advantages of gold include the following benefits:

Diverse Investing Options You can choose from physical gold, coins, stocks, ETFs and IRAs.
Liquidity Gold can be traded anywhere, and you can use gold even if paper currencies collapse.
Fast Release of Investment Funds You can usually sell your gold back to the vendor, but if not, you can always find a buyer for gold.
Preserve Wealth Precious metals have continued to appreciate in value against currencies and most stocks for decades.
Avoid Volatility Relatively stable, gold prices are subject to occasional accelerations in price, but precipitous drops in value occur only rarely and usually after prolonged increases as natural market corrections. You don't have to worry each day about what the market's going to do.
Diversification Gold and precious metals diversify your portfolio and balance your assets—an essential step for nervous investors or people who have all their resources tied-up in investments.
Tax Advantages You can save money on taxes by moving funds to a gold or precious metals IRA, saving about $700 per year.

Disadvantages of Investing in Precious Metal

No investment strategy is without risk, and the U.S. government could decide to confiscate metals and issue worthless currency in their place, but such a scenario is unlikely. Other risks develop from choosing a trader, storing gold and investing in numismatic coins. Risks of investing in gold include:

Difficult to Store Gold and precious metals are hard to store, difficult to secure and popular targets of thieves. You need to choose a reliable storage facility to protect your metals and pay fees and insurance to keep your investment safe.
Poor Choices for Day Traders Precious metals are primarily long-term investments. If you want to trade assets regularly, metals are unsuitable due to the high costs of storage, insurance and administration.
Bad Advice Dealers spot opportunities when selling precious metals to inexperienced investors and often take advantage of them. All dealers are interested in their own profits, but some safeguard their incomes by giving good customer service while others take advantage of customers. You need to research precious metals companies and choose one that has a superior reputation.
Not Diversifying No single strategy is foolproof, and many investors bet the farm on gold while ignoring other precious metals and stock opportunities. Always balance your investments by dividing them among currency, stocks, hard assets and commodities.
Numismatic Coins Coins might or might not appreciate in value based on their numismatic costs, and any increase in their metal value will only apply to part of the investment. As you can easily see, the advantages of investing in metals clearly outweigh the disadvantages, especially if you research your investments, brokers and options carefully and diversify your investment portfolio.

Gold IRAs for Diversifying and Safeguarding Retirement Income

Gold and precious metals IRAs have become increasingly popular and offer people of all backgrounds ways to invest in precious metals by converting their retirement assets. The government allows you to convert your employer IRA or 401K to a gold IRA. You will need to invest at least $5,000 to make enough on your rollover or transfer to cover the expenses of setting up an account and paying start-up and maintenance fees. You should find out what tax rules apply, what prospective gold IRA companies charge for setting up an IRA and investigate other details such as tax implications, custodian relationships and depositories for physical assets. Many of the general questions about gold investing apply to all forms or precious metals investing and IRAs, so research your options by finding answers to some of your investment questions in the following section.

What Millionaires' Have To Say On GOLD INVESTMENTS