Should I Roll My 401k Into Gold?
Physical gold investments via an Individual Retirement Account (IRA) offer a way of diversifying and protecting against inflation. A reliable Gold IRA company should be able to provide you with a list of IRS-approved bullion and coins.
Your second option is direct rollover, in which your 401k trustee transfers funds directly to the trustee of your new Gold IRA. While this method offers maximum convenience and security, it requires more paperwork.
Taxes
A 401k plan allows your savings to grow tax-deferred until retirement, when withdrawals must be taxed at an individual retirement account (IRA). By rolling it over into an IRA, any growth can be treated as capital gains — which usually have much lower tax rates than income taxes do. Conversely, moving money directly between accounts could trigger taxes upon distribution – something to carefully consider with an experienced financial professional when you’re still several years from retiring.
Your employer may also offer SIMPLE or SEP IRA accounts as another option to help self-employed individuals and small businesses save for retirement. While similar to the 401(k), these accounts have their own rules and benefits that might make sense for you – speak to them about any decisions before making any final decisions about these plans.
Inflation
As inflation is beneficial to the economy in small doses, high inflation levels can quickly undermine consumers’ purchasing power and harm companies. The Federal Reserve targets an annual inflation rate of 2 percent as its target.
However, many retirees and those saving for retirement fear the current inflationary environment could threaten their financial security. From fuel to food prices are rising significantly while wages remain stagnant.
Rising costs erode your purchasing power in an investment portfolio, as commodities and equities tend to appreciate with inflation while bonds decline in price. Target-date funds often include inflation hedges to help reduce its effects; such investments include stocks with proven histories of outstripping inflation as well as short-term bonds and real estate. Furthermore, inflation can wreak havoc with company income because rising interest rates used to combat it slow the economy and diminish company performance.
Diversification
Diversification refers to spreading your investment across various asset classes, industries and types in order to mitigate against any possible one-dimensional failure of one form of investment. Doing this reduces the risk that all your money could disappear in one investment that performs poorly.
Your objective should be to build a portfolio that suits both your risk tolerance and goals, and that offers maximum diversification. Asset allocation provides one strategy for accomplishing this by allocating investments between traditional assets and alternative ones.
Your investment goals, time horizon, risk tolerance and financial capital should all inform the asset allocation decisions that you make. When diversifying strategies are being developed it’s also essential to account for market conditions as part of this decision-making process.
Diversifying a portfolio typically means investing in stocks (including index funds that invest in multiple companies), bonds, real estate and CDs from domestic and international companies, with differing sizes and industries represented. Diversification can also be accomplished via mutual funds, exchange-traded funds or target date funds that rebalance investments based on your retirement date.
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