11 Things To Know About Alternative Retirement Investments
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Published on: 25 April 2023
Last Updated on: 21 May 2024
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Approaching retirement, people tend to have a lot of questions on their mind, wondering if they’ve saved enough, deciding whether to sell their home and whether to move to a different place, checking if they’ve made the right estate plan and more.
Getting those questions answered won’t be that difficult, as long as the answer to the first one is positive, i.e. as long as you have saved enough to spend your retirement in complete financial stability and independence. More questions to answer when approaching retirement.
When you actually reach those retirement years, you won’t get to make a huge difference when it comes to saving money, meaning this is something that should be on your mind from the moment you start working.
Put differently, saving when you’re approaching retirement is not the best move, as you won’t have the time to save as much as you’ll actually need. Starting early is the right way to go, so if you’re wondering whether to begin saving, here’s your answer. Yes, you should begin saving even if you have just now started working because it can never be too early to do this.
Understanding when to save is one thing, and understanding how to save is another – the one that needs more attention and more careful considerations. Making reckless moves when trying to save won’t get you anywhere, meaning you’ll absolutely need to be more cautious about it.
The cautiousness should be at its highest level when trying to determine which investments to make for your retirement. Being used to stocks and bonds, you may have already started looking into those, without even realizing that there are some alternatives to check out as well, alternatives that you should use not instead, but along with those traditional assets you’re already familiar with.
Hearing about the concept of alternative investments for the first time will make you wonder. What kinds of alternatives are we referring to here, how can you use them to your advantage, and should you even think of using them or passing on those opportunities?
The fact they exist makes it clear that there is some value to them, so what you have to do is understand that value as well, aiming to decide if they are the right option for you.
There are, clearly, numerous different things you have to know about those alternative retirement investments, and I’ll provide you with a list of those absolute musts, helping you get more familiar with this concept and possibly even figuring out if you should start buying the alternative assets and how to do it.
Precious Metals Are The Most Common Option
When you hear alternative investments, what is the first thing that comes to mind? Knowing at least a few things about the retirement savings process and about investing in general, you’ll probably understand right away that neither stocks nor bonds fall into this category.
Precious metals, however, do. Being the most common alternative retirement investment option, precious metals have become rather popular among investors nowadays, so you must have heard of them already. Silver, gold, platinum, and numerous others are becoming parts of people’s retirement portfolios, and there have to be reasons for that.
But Cryptocurrencies Are A Possibility Too
Before addressing at least a couple of reasons why those precious metals are quickly becoming huge parts of people’s portfolios, let me get you familiar with another alternative investing option.
Cryptocurrencies. Buying these is not unusual nowadays, and even though understanding the assets was quite difficult in the past when they first appeared, people are now increasingly and quickly getting the hang of it all, thus understanding that crypto could be the next best alternative saving option, given the growth potential it brings to the table.
Used more as a means of building great wealth in a short amount of time, cryptocurrencies are praised for the huge ROI they can actually provide you with. Using them to build long-term wealth, however, is also not unusual, although they don’t quite have the same protective function as, for example, gold, meaning they carry a bit higher risks.
Not Every Account Allows You To Make Alternative Investments
Assuming you can use those alternative investments regardless of what kind of account you have is wrong. Trying to buy, for instance, silver through your 401k will result in failure, as that’s pretty much impossible. While 401ks are perhaps a popular saving method, using them for precious metals or cryptocurrencies is still not a possibility, meaning you’ll have to turn to different ones.
In Fact, Just One Does
In fact, you’ll have to turn to just one different account, as it is the only one allowing for those alternative investments. Known as a gold IRA, or an SDIRA, the account provides you with the option of buying both crypto and precious metals to hold in your retirement portfolio.
If you visit Bonds Online, you’ll realize that dealers working in this industry all offer the option of setting up the account for you, so no reason to be worried about not knowing how to actually do it all the right way. Getting help from those dealers is easy and quite useful.
But You Can Rollover The Funds
Realizing your other retirement accounts won’t offer you any alternative options could make you think that your funds are trapped in those accounts and that you won’t ever be able to use them for, say, buying precious metals. That would be the logical conclusion, were there not for one simple thing.
Rollovers exist. Rolling the funds over basically means transferring them from one of your existing accounts, say a 401k, to your newly set up gold IRA. By doing the rollover, you get to use those funds to buy these alternative assets as well, but remember that you can fund the SDIRA with direct deposits as well.
And You Can Do It Without Any Penalties
Knowing how retirement accounts usually work, and that withdrawing funds before a specific time period has passed is often penalized, will have you assume you’ll need to pay a penalty for the rollover as well. If you do it right, though, you won’t, because it’s the withdrawal that’s penalized and not the rollover.
Completing the rollover in a timely manner will avoid having it counted as a withdrawal, thus leading to avoiding the penalties. The dealer you’ll work with will know precisely how to take you through the rollover process successfully, so do get their help.
Precious Metals Are Great Diversification Assets
Are you wondering why precious metals, for example, are a good alternative investment, to begin with? Being historically stable, secure, and quite valuable, these provide for the perfect diversification asset, which is one of the biggest advantages (check out more advantages) of buying them.
Diversifying is when you create a portfolio that holds numerous different asset types instead of just one, thus ensuring that you won’t lose all your money in case one asset flops. Given that precious metals are highly unlikely to flop, they offer your portfolio the protection it needs.
They Hold Value And Inflation Doesn’t Harm Them
Why are these highly unlikely to flop, though? For one thing, history tells us that they’ve always managed to hold their value regardless of the types of instabilities and turmoil that hit the market.
Furthermore, they can’t exactly be harmed by inflation as other assets can, because they tend to behave in a rather different way than, for example, stocks when inflation hits.
Increases in value are to be expected during inflation because these assets behave as commodities and their value will be boosted whenever the living costs increase, thus keeping your portfolio even more protected.
And You Can Sell Them Easily At Any Time
Buying assets you can’t sell is not the right move when investing, especially not if you spend a lot of money on them. High liquidity is another feature of gold and some other precious metals as well, meaning you’ll get to sell them quite easily when you choose to do so.
Trapping huge amounts of your money in assets that aren’t exactly liquid will only have you regret the decision, as you won’t be able to sell them and come up with the money you’ll need at one point or another, especially during your retirement.
You’ll Need A Good Dealer To Invest In Them
So as to make these alternative investments, i.e. buy gold, silver, platinum, or any other precious metal you have in mind and hold it in your retirement account, you’ll need to have a good dealer.
Apart from needing the correct account type, the SDIRA I’ve mentioned above already. you’ll also need a company to sell you the assets, and even to store them for you.
Choosing a great dealer, which can be done through doing enough research on their reputation, experience, legitimacy, and their fees, is definitely a must, so don’t rush into things here and try to make the wisest choice.
Reviews Will Help You Choose One
Making the wisest choice, of course, requires you to do the mentioned research, and there’s one useful source of information that can help you out with that. Reviews.
Reading those will get you familiar with pretty much everything you need to know about these companies before choosing one. Checking the legitimacy, reputation, and other crucial factors will be easy with the right, comprehensive, and objective reviews.
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