Fayetteville, NC (PRWEB) December 20, 2011
American IRA, a national provider of self-directed IRAs, in response to questions from clients and potential clients, announces its new webinar “Rules of the Road”. This webinar is packed with information about prohibited transactions, proper acquisition of assets, and much more.
The dates for these webinars will be announced in a future Press Release and will be posted on the American IRA events pages.
In the meantime, here are a few things self-directed IRA investors should know:
Avoiding Common Pitfalls in Nontraditional IRA Investing:
Individual retirement accounts have tremendous benefits for investors. Anyone who has ever qualified to contribute to an IRA should own one, in our view. And for most people, the simplest and most effective assets to invest in within an IRA should be long term investments such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and income-generating assets such as REITs.
However, for a select minority of investors especially those with expert knowledge of a particular asset class, such as real estate, tax liens, currencies, commodity markets, precious metal markets and the like it may be more appropriate for them to concentrate their efforts in what they know best. If this describes them, then theyll be happy to know that their IRA as well as their SEP IRA and solo 401(k) plan, gives them the flexibility to invest in what they know best. This can be an immense benefit to a certain kind of investor. The problem is that not every advisor understands IRA rules and how they apply to non-traditional investments within them.
Thats why its important for any IRA investor to have an understanding of the very basic rules of IRA investing, independent of their advisor. If they are currently doing business with a traditional broker or advisor, there is frequently nothing in their training or background that prepares them to advise, say, someone who owns rental property, farmland or a closely-held business within their IRA. Even many professionals dont know their way around this very specialized field of financial planning.
Rules Against Self-Dealing:
The first thing to understand is that when Congress first designed the IRA in 1974, they built in a number of restrictions meant to prevent IRA owners from using these vehicles to benefit themselves prior to retirement. For this reason, the following transactions are prohibited within IRAs:
