Conventional IRAs typically include paper assets like bonds, stocks, mutual funds, etc. While these assets provide opportunities for a steady income stream, they are also some of the riskiest investments you can put your money in.

The risk is compounded with the length of time it takes before you can liquidate your IRA assets. Until then, anything can happen that could drastically affect the value of your investments. To mitigate these risks and hedge your investments, we highly recommend investing in a Precious Metals IRA.

A Precious Metals IRA is a self-directed IRA, and is the only IRA type where you can hold precious metals, specifically gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. Aside from this, a Precious Metals IRA works the same way as any other self-directed IRA. You can put other investments in it, including real estate, franchises, and registered securities.

Why invest in precious metals?

Diversification is the best reason for investing in precious metals. Traditional paper assets tend to be highly volatile and dependent on a number of outside forces, including inflation, geopolitics, natural disasters, and many more.

The value of precious metals, on the other hand, is largely unaffected by these factors, as has been proven by their use in centuries of trade and commerce. The factors affecting the price of precious metals are mostly independent of the factors that affect paper assets. In fact, in contrast to paper assets, the value of precious metals tends to rise as inflation rises.

Wealth storage is another good reason for investing in a Precious Metals IRA. While their prices may fluctuate over a period of time, precious metals have an intrinsic value that doesn’t go away regardless of outside factors.

The purchasing power of gold, silver, and other precious metals remain undiminished even through decades of wars, political and economic upheavals, natural disasters, and other significant national and worldwide events.

What kind of precious metals can you invest in?

For Precious Metals IRA, the IRS allows investments in gold, silver, platinum, and palladium. These metals are commonly available in bullion, in the form of coins, bars, and rounds. To qualify as IRA investments, they must meet IRS eligibility requirements on purity, as summarized below:

• Gold – With the exception of American Gold Eagles, gold bullion must have a purity of at least .995 or 99.5% to be IRA-eligible. The following meet this criteria:
• Royal Canadian Mint (RCM) Maple Gold Leaf coins and Gold Bars, Gold Polar Bear, Arctic Fox, and Polar Bear & Cub
• American Gold Buffalo
• Australian Kangaroo/Nugget coins
• Chinese Gold Panda coins
• Credit Suisse/PAMP Suisse Gold bars/ gold rounds

.995 American Gold Eagles only have 91.67% purity, but are among the gold coins eligible for IRA investments.

• Silver – Silver bullion must have a minimum fineness of .999 or 99.9% to be eligible for a Precious Metals IRA. Allowed silver bullion includes:
• American Silver Eagles
• RCM Maple Leaf
• Austrian Vienna Philharmonic
• Privately minted silver bars with 99.9% fineness
• Silver Australian Kookaburras and Koalas
• Platinum and Palladium – Platinum and palladium bullion must have .9995 or 99.95% purity to be eligible for a Precious Metals IRA. Qualified bullion includes:
• American Eagle platinum and palladium bullion coins
• RCM Canadian Maple platinum and palladium coins
• Isle of Man 1-oz. platinum and palladium coins

Compared to gold and silver, platinum and palladium are rarer. Platinum is generally more expensive than gold, while palladium costs less than gold. This discrepancy in pricing is the result of the lower volume palladium is trading in – something that just might change in the near future, given the rising popularity of precious metals investments.