What Are Home Storage Gold IRAs?

You work hard for your money, and you want to make sure that it is well protected. However, there are a lot of risks for your money.  For instance, seeing how the government just gets deeper and deeper into our lives and pockets, it’s hard to know if your money is safe – unless you keep it in your own hands.  A home storage gold IRA is a way for you to keep your IRA invested in gold, and for you to keep possession of your gold in your own home.

While you could keep your money under your mattress or buried in a jar in your backyard, those aren’t really the most effective options for keeping your money safe.
Investing in gold and silver is an excellent way to keep your money protected, but it makes sense that you would want to have your gold and silver in your possession, just like you would to keep your physical cash on you. The good news is that now there is a way that you can keep your gold and silver investments in your personal possession. How? – With the Home Storage Gold IRA.

However, as you will read, you are unlikely to meet the requirements to actually hold the gold yourself and act as an IRS approved trustee.  That being said, you have many bank and nonbank options alike that will allow you to keep the gold with them, usually for a very small fee of course, and they will act as your trustee and stay in compliance with IRS rules.  You will have to decide for yourself whether or not it is worth it for you to register yourself as a trustee or simply find a bank willing to hold your physical bullion.

What is the Home Storage Gold IRA?

The Home Storage Gold IRA provides investors with an option to hold their gold and silver metals privately.  While the IRS openly permits anyone to hold certain types of pure gold bullion and other bullion within their tax qualified IRA accounts, they want to make sure that the tracking an administration of the IRA is done properly within their tax guidelines.  A home storage IRA is the idea of registering yourself as a trustee, and holding the physical bullion yourself as opposed to keeping it with a third party.  While this may sound like an attractive option, in reality the paperwork and qualification expense to actually pull this off legally is much more difficult than it sounds.

You may still want to purse a home storage IRA, and if you do we can help you.  The benefits taking this route be numerous. Some of the key benefits include:

  • Having complete control over your financial future in the sense that you do not depend on anyone else for access to your bullion.
  • Your bullion will provide great protection against inflation and you do not need to worry about it being “electronic money” that can disappear.
  • Your money is easy to access, should you ever be facing a financial emergency in the future.  If you need the gold, you can grab it from your own safe.
  • There aren’t any management fees like there may be with banks or other third parties, however you may have some setup fees.
  • You have lifetime support for your account if you register it with Gramercy Gold.
  • You have peace of mind knowing exactly where your money is, and that you have direct access to it.  This is the biggest reason that most people inquire about home storage IRAs.

Is Gold Right For You?

Moving your retirement account into gold is a big decision to make that will have lasting effects on your future if you plan on depending upon your retirement account to fund your lifestyle during retirement.

When you take a historical look, over the last 45 years gold has returned about 350%, while the Dow Jones has returned over 1,200%.  Based on this analysis alone you might think that stocks are better for you.  However, timing matters so much with stocks.  If you buy at a high point in the market, you may end up with a small fraction of the overall return of someone who buys into stocks when the market is depressed.  Gold also has a much longer track record of success.  It has been less than 100 years since the boom years of the roaring twenties and the bust years of the great depression.  Gold on the other hand has been an investment for over 7,000 years!

Deciding whether or not gold is right for your retirement account comes down to your beliefs about our future.  Are stocks likely to crash again in the next 10 years?  Do you want to hold them through this?  Or do you want a more stable store of value like Gold and Silver that usually actually gets more valuable when stocks crash?  Not many people who have held gold for a considerable amount of time have regretted their decision to buy it.

Is it Legal

This is the biggest question on investors minds.  Controlling your own destiny goes hand in hand with the desire to invest in bullion like gold and silver.  If you are not allowed to hold the money yourself in your home or lockbox, what good does it really do?

In simple terms, yes it is technically legal to keep the physical gold bullion that you hold in your IRA in your own home.  However, it is not easy to meet the IRS guidelines for doing so and you are probably better off having a registered bank or trustee hold the gold instead.  Here is a list of approved nonbank trustees that the IRS keeps.   If you want to hold your gold in your own home, you would need to get on this list.  While you can technically meet the guidelines if you cross a lot of red tape, it probably isn’t worth it.  A much safer and more practical way to hold physical bullion in your IRA for tax purposes is to keep it with an approved bank or nonbank trustee.

If you want to hold gold in your home, you are probably best off purchasing it with nonqualified money.  In reality this makes it much harder for anyone other than you to track, if that worries you.

Do You Need a Good Safe?

Yes, if you plan on storing gold in your home you will want a very good high quality safe like this one by Sentry Safe sold on Amazon.  If you are planning on keeping thousands of dollars or even millions of dollars at home, please strongly consider investing in a top notch way of storing it securely.  When choosing a safe, make sure that you pick one that can’t be picked up and moved by an intruder.  In other words you want it to be really heavy, or built into a wall.  Something that can be picked up and moved could easily be opened by a thief in their home.

How does a Home Storage Gold IRA Work?

The process is actually very simple at it’s core. Gold buyers who are interested in home storage will first establish a self-directed IRA with checkbook control. The Home Storage Gold IRA company that you choose to work with will guide you through the entire process of getting set up.

You will need to have a custodian with your Home Storage Gold IRA. This is a requirement dictated by IRS regulations. The custodian will hold the LLC ownership in a tax-deferred status; however, you will have total control of the money and the precious metals that you are protecting with this option.  You also have the choice of keeping your gold with your custodian, which may be a safer option for you.  They will keep your gold safe, but you still have access to it if you ever need it.

What Type of Precious Metals are Allowed with a Home Storage Gold IRA?

Under the Internal Revenue Code Section 408(m), there is an exemption for bullion and coins that are allowed to be bought through a retirement account. You can contact your Home Storage IRA Specialist to learn more about the specific type of products that are eligible for your account, but generally speaking you can purchase gold coins, bullion, silver, gold bars, and other denominations of precious metals.  You can not have any coins that are considered “collectibles”.  This means that the value of the coin can only be derived from the value of the gold contained within it.  The gold must also be pure investment grade gold.

What Type of Account can be Turned into a Home Storage Gold IRA?

Each and every type of retirement account is eligible for a home storage IRA solution. It will require a rollover to a traditional IRA, but this is an easy process.  Examples of the accounts that are eligible for this option include:

  • Traditional IRAs
  • Roth IRAs
  • SEP
  • SIMPLE
  • 401K
  • 403b
  • 457
  • TSP
  • Annuities

Is this Type of Account and Process Allowed by the IRS?

Yes, and they have been since the early 1990s. With the Home Storage Gold IRA, you can take advantage of the same types of benefits that traditional retirement plans offer. You are advised, however, to consult with your accountant or a tax attorney to confirm the regulations that are currently set up, and to find out how they will impact your specific circumstances.  That being said, Gramercy Gold can help you set up an account and invest your money as you wish in real gold.

The Home Storage Gold IRA can prove to be a very beneficial option for your financial future.  If you are interested in investigating the possibilities, please contact Gramercy Gold immediately.