Tuesday, October 21, 2014

An Introduction to Self Directed Individual Retirement Accounts, by Jesus "Jesse" D. Gonzalez Jr.

A Guest Blog by Jesus "Jesse" D. Gonzalez Jr.

What is a Self Directed Individual Retirement Account?

Before we get started in answering what a SDIRA or Self Directed IRA is, first we must 
know what an IRA or Individual Retirement Account is. An IRA is an individual retirement 
account, that gives tax advantages for retirement savings. For right now, let’s keep it simple. 
For the purposes of our discussion today, all you really need to know is an IRA is a Individual 
Retirement Account that comes with tax advantages.

IRAs come in several types, some of which you may be familiar with because they are offered to 
you by your employer or you struck out on your own, contacted a bank and opened one up. The 
two most common are the Traditional IRA and the Roth IRA. Some other types of IRAs are the 
SEP or Simplified Employee Pension IRA and the Simple IRA. Of course, let’s not forget the 
least known amongst the IRA family and the purpose of our conversation today and that is the 
SDIRA or Self Directed IRA.

Where a SDIRA differs from the other members of the IRA family is the fact that a SDIRA 
allows owners to invest in a much broader array of investments. Other than investing in your 
banks typical, approved IRA investments like, stocks, bonds, mutual funds and CDs a SDIRA 
allows you to choose alternative investment options. For example, you can choose to invest your 
retirement money in real estate, tax liens, mortgages, franchises, private equity, partnerships or 
even precious metals. For this very reason, a SDIRA is an attractive option for investor looking 
to diversify their retirement funds and more specifically use their personal knowledge of a 
permitted investment to grow wealth.

So, by now, you are likely wondering to yourself, why haven’t you heard of this SDIRA 
option...right? Well, that’s actually a pretty simple question to answer. Your large financial 
institutions that govern or administer retirement savings are in the business or selling their own 
stocks, bonds, mutual funds and CDs. Essentially, they make more money by selling you their 
own “approved” products versus allowing you to go out and use your money to invest in real 
estate. In other words, they don’t make enough money off of you to make it worth their time 
to offer you the ability to invest in alternative investments. If you aren’t buying their products, 
they aren’t interested in having you as a client. The second reason is more of a practicability 
issue. You see, these banks have standardized their processes and procedures in order to reduce 
cost and by doing so, alternative investments like, real estate, aren’t able to be standardized 
and therefore, it’s really not feasible for them to allow their investor to invest in alternative 
investments. Essentially it would just cost them too much. Alternative investments don’t net 
large financial retirement institutions the money they want to make it attractive for them to offer 
alternative investing as an option for their clients. This is the only reason you haven’t heard of 
the SDIRA option.

A key difference between a SDIRA and the other members of the IRA family is that a Self 
Directed IRA is Self Directed. In other words, if you don’t log in and, make investment decisions 
on behalf of the fund, the fund will not grow, it will be stagnant. Understanding the role you play 
in a SDIRA is essential to your success because, unlike the other IRAs who are administered 
and controlled by your bank, a SDIRA is administered and controlled by you. You must take an 
active participatory role in a SDIRA to be successful.

A third difference a SDIRA has in comparison to the other IRAs is the fact your retirement 
money isn’t held in a bank. Unlike the other IRAs, normally the SDIRA funds are held with a 
custodian who isn’t a traditional bank. SDIRA funds are normally held in trust, with a trustee 
who acts as a custodian of the account. The custodian’s duties are extremely limited so, it’s very 
important when deciding what trustee or custodian to partner with, you do your research and 
learn about account minimums, fees and charges. They will all very greatly so, be informed. 


To sum it up, the three key differences with a SDIRA versus the other IRAs are....

1. SDIRAs allow for a broader range of investment opportunities

2. SDIRAs require their owners to make investment decisions otherwise, the fund doesn’t 
grow

3. SDIRAs funds are held in trust with a trustee who acts only as a custodian.


Now that you understand the three major differences between a SDIRA and other IRAs, let’s 
now talk more specifically about how to invest using a SDIRA.

SDIRA investing can be a bit tricky because, unlike traditional investments like stocks, bonds, 
mutual funds or CDs, the broader range of investment opportunities may simply lack the 
necessary information required to make a prudent financial investment decision. Think back 
to the last time you logged into your retirement plan with your bank. The bank should have 
provided you a booklet called a prospectus. This prospectus outlined all the investment facts 
about that fund, bond, mutual fund or CD you needed to know. Sure, most of you likely never 
read it but, all that important performance information was available to you to make a prudent 
investment decision. With SDIRA investments, you don’t get a prospectus. Stop and critically 
think about what I am saying. For example, if you decided to invest in livestock, do you really 
think the farmer is going to hand you over a prospectus of the livestock’s performance over the 
last 10 years? Nope, that’s not going to be happening. In fact, short of getting to go out to the 
farm, look the livestock over....that’s about as good as it is going to get. Let’s hypothetically say 
the farmer did have a prospectus of his livestock, would you be able to truly rely on its accuracy? 

Better yet, do you think he paid for an independent audit of his prospectus to verify it? I don’t 
think so. Keep in mind, your SDIRA trustee or custodian doesn’t research your investments 
either so, when determining on what to invest in, you are truly on your own....hence the word, 
Self Directed. You also need to know that because a serious lack of information exists with 
SDIRA investing, it does make SDIRA investors a big target for fraud schemes. With all that 
being said, you may now be wondering, why in the world would anyone invest their retirement 
savings using a SDIRA?

SDIRA investors typically have personal unique knowledge of the investments they participate 
in. For example, let’s take myself. As an experienced real estate broker, I would use my SDIRA 
to invest in things like, real estate, deeds of trust, mortgages and real estate tax liens. I use 
my personal, unique knowledge and experience of these topics to use my SDIRA to invest in. 
You wouldn’t see me investing my SDIRA in Livestock. I have absolutely no knowledge of 
Livestock and wouldn’t know the first thing about Livestock to consider. On the other hand, I 
have completed enough real estate transactions in my 10 years as a licensed agent, to determine 
if a house, or a piece of land, or a deed, or a tax lien is a wise investment. I can almost do that 
with my eyes closed. Now, most of you out there listening or reading this will think to yourself, I 
don’t have any experience in real estate so, I guess I am out of the SDIRA game however, that’s 
not true.

Some SDIRA investors who want to diversify their retirement and grow it quicker than they 
could with their bank will sometimes hire professionals to assist them with investing in a 
particular type of investment. For example, let’s take myself again. I have several SDIRA 
investors who have learned how to invest in real estate by using me as their agent. Because I 
myself use a SDIRA to invest with and I myself have been successful investing using a SDIRA 
for real estate investing, I can give potential SDIRA investors insight into my own experience. 
So, if you want to use your retirement to invest in SDIRA alternative investments like real 
estate, find yourself a qualified, experienced SDIRA real estate investor agent to help you out. 

For that matter, you don’t have to just stick with real estate, I am sure you could find a similar 
experienced SDIRA investor in any type of approved alternative investment you want to invest 
in, if you just ask around.

The Internal Revenue Service doesn’t give us a list of approved SDIRA investments, the list 
would be too long however, they do give us a list of prohibited investment, these you need 
to stay away from. For a list of prohibited SDIRA investments, you really need to visit the 
IRS website. That website changes often so, I didn’t give you a direct link to the prohibited 
investments but, it’s not that hard to search for on the IRS site. In the search engine, just type 
IRA and that whole section comes up. Not to mention, most custodians will give you a list of 
prohibited investments, so no worries, you will know what to stay away from, either way.

Finally, let’s talk about custodians. It has been my experience that they are not all created equal. 
Truth is, I learned the hard way that some are much better than others.....by leaps and bounds. 
I have finally settled on a custodian that I love. They have very low fees, very good customer 
service, incredible turnaround times and best of all, an education resource that has truly been 
beneficial to me. They aren’t paying me to be an advocate so, I won’t advertise for them for free 
in this blog but, who knows....I may become a paid spokesman in the future....lol.

That’s it. It really is that simple. You have now been introduced to SDIRA. I will be working 
on another blog a little later this week about some investment strategies using a SDIRA. To 
get automatically updated when that blog comes out, join my SDIRA Investment Network, 

Jesus "Jesse" D. Gonzalez Jr. Realtor, BBB Accredited Business
Principal Broker / Owner
Liberty House Realty LLC
1709 Ridgemere Ct.
Hermitage, Tn 37076
Designation / Certification: REOPro, RDCPro, NFSTI, PSC Pre-Foreclosure Mastery, PSC HAMP Mastery, PSC HAFA Mastery, PSC FDCPA Compliant, CDAT, HRC, Short Sale Specialist
EMATR Ethics Standard Grievance Committee Member

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