Should I switch/rollover my IRA to a Gold IRA at Regal Assets?
"The link you originally included had an affiliate code included (now removed). It is likely that your ""friend"" suggested the site to you because there is something in it for your ""friend"" if you sign up with their link. Seek independent financial advice, not from somebody trying to earn a commission off you. Don't trust everything you read online – again, the advice may be biased.  Many of the online ""reviews"" for Regal Assets look like excuses to post affiliate links. A handful of the highly-ranked (by Google Search) ""reviews"" about this company even obscure their links to this company using HTTP redirects. Whenever I see this practice in a ""review"" for a web site, I have to ask if it is to try and appear more independent by hiding the affiliation? Gold and other precious metal commodities can be part of a diversified portfolio, a small part with some value as a hedge, but IMHO it isn't prudent to put all your eggs in that basket. Look up the benefits of diversification.  It isn't hard to find compelling evidence in favor of the practice.  You should also look up the benefits of low-fee passively-managed index funds. A self-directed IRA with a reputable broker can give you access to a wide selection of low-fee funds, not just a single risky asset class." Advantages of Gold IRA (regardless of where you're holding it): Disadvantages of Gold IRA: Instead, you can invest in trust funds like SLV (The ETF for silver) or GLD in your regular brokerage IRA. These funds negotiate their prices of storage, are relatively liquid, and shield you from the dangers of owning physical metal while providing opportunity to invest in it at market prices.
I am assuming that you are talking about rolling a 401k over to an IRA since if you were rolling over to another 401k you probably would not have a choice as to where it would be. Ameriprise will generally have lower fees than JPMorgan. (Probably why your husband's mutual fund is with Ameriprise.) Additionally having both accounts with Ameriprise will better allow them to assist you with your long term financial planning. For these two reasons I would recommend rolling your account over to Ameriprise.   No, I do not work for Ameriprise "I don't think there's a rule -- (I can't comment) but Brick cited IRS rules...but IMO Brick missed one thing -- @ashur668 is not looking for a distribution, but is looking for a rollover. My best guess:  that this part of the ruleset is not well defined, and your (and my) employer have chosen to interpret any withdrawl as a ""distribution"", even if better characterized a rollover. A few months ago, I went so far as to explore if I could use a loophole -- my company had just gone through a merger; I was hoping I could rollover some or maybe all of my 401k to my IRA (I remember now, it would have been everything before starting roth 401k contributions).  My company asserted this was not permitted, and further asserted that the rumors I had heard were mistaken that when we went through a company spin-off a few years before, that nobody under 59 1/2 was permitted to roll over. I did a quick search and found IRS topic 413  As far as I can tell, this topic is silent on the matter at hand. Topic 413 referred me to IRS Publication 575, where I started looking at the section on rollovers.  I read some of it then got bored. Note that we're one step removed -- we are reading IRS publications and interpretations of IRS rules.  I don't know that anybody here has read the actual tax law.  There may be something in there that prevents companies from rolling over before 59 1/2 that is not well codified in IRS publications." "You ask about ""traditional IRA VS taxable (non-retirement) investment account.""  You already know about tax deductible IRAs, which are similar, mostly, to your 401(k). A Traditional IRA can have a non-deducted component. In a sense, it then functions similar to the fully pre-tax IRA as it grows tax free, but then withdrawals are made and taxes paid on the pro-rated not-yet-taxed money.  It also offers the simple conversion to a Roth IRA. For those who have no current IRA with pre-tax money, a conversion will be tax free, for those with an existing pretax IRA, conversions are prorated for tax due, if the account had say $10,000, and $5,000 was post-tax, any conversion will have half taxed at your marginal rate." Unless I'm misunderstanding something, you don't need to move your assets into a new type of account to accomplish your goal of letting your money grow in a low cost vanguard index fund. Simply reallocate your assets within the Inherited IRA. If the brokerage you're in doesn't meet your needs (high transaction fees, no access to the Vanguard funds you're interested in) you can always move to a low cost brokerage. The new brokerage can help you transfer your assets so that the Inherited IRA remains intact. You will not have a tax burden if you do this reallocation and you'll be able to feel good about your diversification with a low cost index fund. You will, however, have to pay taxes on your RMD. Since you're young I can't imagine that your RMD will be greater than the $5k you can invest in a Roth IRA. If it is, you can open a personal account and keep letting the the money grow. "Taxes are triggered when you sell the individual stock.      The IRS doesn't care which of your accounts the money is in.  They view all your bank and brokerage accounts as if they are one big account mashed together.   That kind of lumping is standard accounting practice for businesses. P/L, balance sheets, cash flow statements etc. will clump cash accounts as ""cash"".  Taxes are also triggered when they pay you a dividend.  That's why ETFs are preferable to mutual funds; ETFs automatically fold the dividends back into the ETF's value, so it doesn't cause a taxable event.  Less paperwork.  None of the above applies to retirement accounts.  They are special.  You don't report activity inside retirement accounts, because it would be very hard for regular folk to do that reporting, so that would discourage them from taking IRAs.   Taxes are paid at withdrawal time (or in Roth's, never.)" 3 Yes, a big yes, it cannot go into the account it came from. Then both accounts >can't be touched for a year. 3) Actually it looks like you can reinvest it in the same IRA account. Based on IRS publication 590 http://www.irs.gov/publications/p590/ch01.html You can withdraw, tax free, all or part of the assets from one traditional IRA if you reinvest them within 60 days in the same or another traditional IRA. Because this is a rollover, you cannot deduct the amount that you reinvest in an IRA. "Your are mixing multiple questions with assertions which may or may not be true. So I'll take a stab at this, comment if it doesn't make sense to you. To answer the question in the title, you invest in an IRA because you want to save money to allow you to retire. The government provides you with tax incentives that make an IRA an excellent vehicle to do this. The rules regarding IRA tax treatment provide disincentives, through tax penalties, for withdrawing money before retirement. This topic is covered dozens of times, so search around for more detail. Regarding your desire to invest in items with high ""intrinsic"" value, I would argue that gold and silver are not good vehicles for doing this. Intrinsic value doesn't mean what you want it to mean in this context -- gold and silver are commodities, whose prices fluctuate dramatically.  If you want to grow money for retirement over a long period, of time, you should be invested in diversified collection of investments, and precious metals should be a relatively small part of your portfolio." Brokerages are supposed to keep your money separate from theirs. So, even if they fail as a company, your money and investments are still there, and can be transferred to another brokerage. It doesn't matter if it's an IRA or taxable account.  Of course, as is the case with MF Global, if illegally take their client's money (i.e., steal), it may be a different story. In such cases, SIPC covers up to $500K, of which $250K can be cash, as JoeTaxpayer said.  You may be interested in the following news item from the SEC. It's about some proposed changes, but to frame the proposal they lay out the way it is now: http://www.sec.gov/news/press/2011/2011-128.htm The most relevant quote:   The Customer Protection Rule (Rule 15c3-3).   This SEC rule requires a   broker-dealer to segregate customer securities and cash from the   firm’s proprietary business activities. If the broker-dealer fails,   these customer assets should be readily available to be returned to   customers. "You can have as many IRA accounts as you want (whether Roth or Traditional), so you can have a Roth IRA with American Funds and another Roth IRA with Vanguard if you like. One disadvantage of  having too many IRA accounts with small balances in each is that most custodians  (including Vanguard) charge an annual fee for maintaining IRA accounts with small balances but waive the fee if the balance is large. So it is best to keep your Roth IRA in just one or two funds with just one or two custodians until such time as investment returns plus additional contributions made over the years makes the balances large enough to diversify further. Remember also that you cannot contribute the maximum to each IRA; the sum total of all your IRA contributions (doesn't matter whether to Roth or to Traditional IRAs) for any year must satisfy the limit for that year. You can move money from one IRA of yours to another IRA (of the same type) of yours without any tax issues to worry about. Such movements (called rollovers or transfers) are  not contributions and do not count towards the annual contribution limit. The easiest way to do move money from one IRA account to another IRA account is by a trustee-to-trustee transfer where the money goes directly from one custodian (American Funds in this case) to the other custodian (Vanguard in this case). The easiest way of accomplishing this is to call Vanguard or go online on their website, tell them that you are wanting to  establish a Roth IRA with them, and that you want to fund it by transferring money held in a Roth IRA with American Funds. Give Vanguard the account  number of your existing American Funds IRA, tell them how much  you want to transfer over -- $1000 or $20,000 or the entire balance as the case may be -- and tell Vanguard to go get the money.  In a few days' time, the money will appear in your new Vanguard Roth IRA and the American Funds Roth IRA will have a smaller balance, possibly a zero balance, or might even be closed if you told Vanguard to collect the entire balance.  DO NOT approach American Funds and tell them that you want to transfer money to a new Roth IRA with Vanguard: they will bitch and moan and drag their heels about doing so because  they are unhappy to lose your business, and will probably screw up the transfer. Talk to Vanguard only. They are eager to get their hands on your IRA money and will gladly take care of the whole thing for you at no charge to you. DO NOT cash in any stock shares, or mutual fund shares, or whatever is in your Roth IRA in preparation for ""cashing out of the old account"". There is a method where you take a ""rollover distribution"" from your American Funds Roth IRA and then deposit the money into your new Vanguard Roth IRA within 60 days, but I recommend most strongly against using this because too many people manage to screw it up. It is 60 days, not two months; the clock starts from the day American Funds cuts your check, not when you get the check, and it is stopped when the money gets deposited into your new account, not the day you mailed the check to Vanguard or the day that Vanguard received it,  and so on. In short, DO NOT try this at home:  stick to a trustee-to-trustee transfer and avoid the hassles." It is not absolutely clear that transitioning all your retirement money from mutual funds, stocks, bonds, CDs etc to an annuity (either now, or just before retirement) is the best decision, especially once you are old enough to have to take Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). The IRS says in Publication 590 Distributions from individual retirement annuities.   If your traditional IRA is an individual retirement annuity, special rules apply to figuring the required minimum distribution. For more information on rules for annuities, see Regulations section 1.401(a)(9)-6. These regulations can be read in many libraries, IRS offices, and online at IRS.gov. I would recommend talking to a tax accountant before going your proposed route. I have managed two IRA accounts; one I inherited from my wife's 401K and my own's 457B.  I managed actively my wife's 401 at Tradestation which doesn't restrict on Options except level 5 as naked puts and calls. I moved half of my 457B funds to TDAmeritrade, the only broker authorized by my employer, to open a Self Directed account.  However, my 457 plan disallows me from using a Cash-secured Puts, only Covered Calls.  For those who does not know investing, I resent the contention that participants to these IRAs should not be messing around with their IRA funds.  For years, I left my 401k/457B funds with my current fund custodian, Great West Financial.  I checked it's current values once or twice a year. These last years, the market dived in the last 2 quarters of 2015 and another dive early January and February of 2016.  I lost a total of $40K leaving my portfolio with my current custodian choosing all 30 products they offer, 90% of them are ETFs and the rest are bonds. If you don't know investing, better leave it with the pros - right?  But no one can predict the future of the market.  Even the pros are at the mercy of the market. So, I you know how to invest and choose your stocks, I don't think your plan administrator has to limit you on how you manage your funds. For example, if you are not allowed to place a Cash-Secured Puts and you just Buy the stocks or EFT at market or even limit order, you buy the securities at their market value. If you sell a Cash-secured puts against the stocks/ETF you are interested in buying, you will receive a credit in fraction of a dollar in a specific time frame.  In average, your cost to owning a stock/ETF is lesser if you buy it at market or even a limit order.  Most of the participants of the IRA funds rely too much on their portfolio manager because they don't know how to manage. If you try to educate yourself at a minimum, you will have a good understanding of how your IRA funds are tied up to the market.  If you know how to trade in bear market compared to bull market, then you are good at managing your investments.  When I started contributing to my employer's deferred comp account (457B) as a public employee, I have no idea of how my portfolio works.  Year after year as I looked at my investment, I was happy because it continued to grow.  Without scrutinizing how much it grew yearly, and my regular payroll contribution, I am happy even it only grew 2% per year.  And at this age that I am ready to retire at 60, I started taking investment classes and attended pre-retirement seminars.  Then I knew that it was not totally a good decision to leave your retirement funds in the hands of the portfolio manager since they don't really care if it tanked out on some years as long at overall it grew to a meager 1%-4% because they managers are pretty conservative on picking the equities they invest.  You can generalize that maybe 90% of IRA investors don't know about investing and have poor decision making actions which securities/ETF to buy and hold. For those who would like to remain as one, that is fine.  But for those who spent time and money to study and know how to invest, I don't think the plan manager can limit the participants ability to manage their own portfolio especially if the funds have no matching from the employer like mine. All I can say to all who have IRA or any retirement accounts, educate yourself early because if you leave it all to your portfolio managers, you lost a lot.  Don't believe much in what those commercial fund managers also show in their presentation just to move your funds for them to manage.  Be proactive.  If you start learning how to invest now when you are young, JUST DO IT! Right you **don't** ever want to use that account for your traditional 401k rollovers.  Realistically, you could *probably* still have it reclassified as a traditional IRA and roll your traditional 401ks into it, which was basically your original idea except none of the funds would be Roth; but if you see yourself ever potentially contributing to a Roth IRA going forward (which makes all the more sense if you have only traditional 401k funds in your retirement portfolio so far), there's nothing *wrong* with having both types of IRA at the same time.  But no, don't cross the streams!  :) Rolling a 401(k) to an IRA should be your default best option. Rolling a 401(k) to another 401(k) is rarely the best option, but that does happen.  I've done it once when I started a job at a company that had a great 401(k) with a good selection of low-cost mutual funds. I rolled the 401(k) from one previous job in to this 401(k) to take advantage of it.  In all other cases, I rolled 401(k)s from previous jobs to my Rollover IRA, which gave me the most freedom of investment options. Finally, with 401(k)-to-Roth IRA rollovers, it's important to decouple two concepts so you can analyze it as a sum of two transactions: "Assuming my math is correct and that I'm not missing something about Roth investments, it appears to me that either option will work out exactly the same if you will be in the same tax bracket in retirement. This is true only if your average tax rate in retirement is the same as your current marginal rate. I'm surprised none of the answers mention this since it is the crux of your question!  If you can deduct an IRA against your income taxes, it is almost always better option than the Roth equivalent. Marginal rates should not be compared to average rates or you will form all sorts of inaccurate conclusions. ""If you are in a lower tax rate in retirement traditional is better"" really means, ""if your average tax rate in retirement is lower than your current marginal rate, traditional is better"" - which for the overwhelming majority of Americans is the case. Consider the following. Let's say your intend to contribute $1000 in one year (making $2k) and withdraw it the next that is your only income in that year. Your tax brackets look like: This is quite simplified but for this purpose will illustrate precisely why comparisons like you are making are very misleading. In this case you can put $1000 in and pay no income tax at all (because you deduct it). You then withdraw $1000 the next year. The first $500 you withdraw you pay no taxes on and the next $500 has a tax rate of 15%, for a total tax of of $75. However - this is a tax against your entire withdrawal of $1000, so your average tax rate (this is important! average is different than marginal) is only 7.5% and you are left with $925. In this case you can only contribute $850 to the IRA because you are taxed against the money at your marginal rate (15%). When you withdraw it, you don't pay any taxes and are left with the entire $850 $850. This is less than the above, because you are taxed the whole amount at your previous marginal rate. If however your tax rate in retirement was 30% for everything above $500, only then are the two scenarios equal. Your marginal tax rate in retirement has to be very high relative to your current tax rate for the Roth to ever catch up and be better. If you are able to deduct an IRA contribution, it will almost always be the best option. The average federal income tax rate on middle class families has not changed dramatically enough over the past 50 years to be above normal marginal tax rates - even at the 15% federal tax bracket, your marginal rate is still higher than the highest average tax rate for the past 50 years by at least 3% and normally significantly so. The reason I make this point about middle class marginal rates is that the majority of ""taxes might be higher in retirement!"" is very unlikely to be the case in a meaningful way given the past 50 years. However if you are in the top tax rate you are paying historic low tax rates (by a factor of nearly 3), but also observe you can't do either IRA since you must make $400k/year. The difference for middle class is no where near as noticeable. Keep in mind if you can't deduct, there is no reason to not contribute to the Roth. There are other factors contributing to the traditional/Roth decision. This answer only addresses the specifics in your question." "What you're describing is a non-deductible traditional IRA.  That is what happens when your employer 401K or your high income disqualifies gou from using a traditional IRA the normal way.   Yes, non-deductible traditional IRAs are stupid.**   Now let's be clear on the mechanism behind the difference.  There's an axiom of tax law that the same money can't be taxed twice.  This is baked so deep into tax law that it often isn't even specified particularly.  The IRS is not allowed to impose tax on money already taxed, i.e. The original contribution on an ND Trad IRA.  So this is not a new kind of IRA, it is simply a Trad IRA with an asterisk.  **But then, some say so are deductible traditional IRAs when compared to the Roth.   The real power of an ND Trad IRA is that it can be converted to Roth at all income levels.  This is called the ""Roth Backdoor"".  It combines three factors. Contribute to an ND Trad IRA, stick it in a money market/sweep fund, and a week later convert to Roth, pay taxes on the 17 cents of growth in the sweep fund since the rest was already taxed.  The net effect is to work the same as a Roth contribution - not tax deductible, becomes a Roth, and is not taxed on distribution.   If you already have traditional IRA money that you contributed that wasn't taxed, this really screws things up.  Because you can't segment or LIFO your IRA money, the IRS considers it one huge bucket, and requires you draw in proportion. EEK! Suppose you contribute $5000 to an IRA in a non-deductible mode.  But you also have a different IRA funded with pretax money that now has $45,000.   As far as IRS is concerned, you have one $50,000 IRA and only $5000 (10%) is post-tax.   You convert $5000 to Roth and IRS says 90% of that money is taxable, since it's the same pool of money.  You owe taxes on all of it less the $500 fraction that was pre-taxed, and $4500 of already-taxed IRA remains in the account.  The math gets totally out-of-hand after just a couple of conversions.   Your best bet is to convert the whole shebang at one time -- and to avoid a monstrous tax hit, do this in a gap year."