The Case for Gold IRAs: Building a Resilient Retirement Portfolio

MIKE BARNES 0:10

Welcome to America’s Gold Authority Podcast. My name is Mike Barnes. IRA rollovers, they’re actually easier than you may think. And with forecasters saying gold prices may hit 6,000 by the end of the year and go even higher after that, is now the time to roll over into gold? Let’s talk about that with a couple of experts. Ed Moy and Brad Chastain join me now. And Ed, let’s start with you. As the 38th Director of the United States Mint and senior IRA strategist for U.S. Money Reserved, is now the time for gold IRAs?

ED MOY 0:42

Yes. Well, uh uh let me take just a pause. It all depends on what your investment goals are. And for me, when you take a look at people who are saving for retirement, it’s really hard to predict uh where the market’s going to be 10 years, 20 years, 40 years down the line. And so it makes sense for most people saving for retirement to have some portion of their retirement savings uh into a gold IRA. Because when you look at the performance of gold over the long term, it’s uh outstandingly uh good performance. And so uh I recommend uh everyone should take a look at it, and it’s probably right for most people.

MIKE BARNES 1:31

Brad, I mentioned that $6,000 number. I know there are some people who say it may be about $5,400 or $5,500. Even if it’s something like that, that’s more than a 20% return just this year. So now just seems to be a perfect time.

BRAD CHASTAIN 1:44

Yeah, absolutely. And we always say if you don’t have an allocation of gold, like Ed said, it’s right for most people to have a portion of their portfolio in precious metals. Um, most people are still just have a strictly stock and bond portfolio, and um that has been a portfolio since the 80s we’ve talked quite a bit about um that has done well where bonds have been offsetting stock risk overall, but that’s really a unique period in history. Historically, prior to the 80s, that portfolio really would not have done very well. Bonds would not have provided a lot of protection for stocks. It’s kind of a newer phenomenon in this world of falling interest rates and globalization and falling inflation rates that we’ve had over the over the last 45 years. Um, and in the early 80s, nobody really had that kind of portfolio because it hadn’t worked historically. Um, it really got adopted as people saw the performance in that post-world. And now as we’ve kind of moved out of that, we’ve kind of reversed that trend of globalization, we’re seeing higher inflation, we’re seeing higher rates, we’re seeing this deglobalization trend. Um, it’s more important than ever to make sure that your portfolio is positioned for what the world is going to look like in the future, which is unknown. Uh, but getting that extra diversification with something like gold that is taking really a centerpiece in the evolution of this monetary system is really important, we think. So we don’t know what will happen this year or next year. This is a decades-long trend that we’re setting out off on, and we’re very early, and we want to make sure that we’re positioned for it. But as far as those predictions that are, you know, 6,000 by the end of the year, I won’t put my hat in those kind of guesses because the short run, it’s anybody’s game. But I know that uh I want to be building that position for the long term right now.

ED MOY 3:33

And Brad, uh, you mentioned a couple of good points that I wanted to uh emphasize. And one is that uh gold has really uh did a great job appreciating over the long term, and that’s one reason why uh investors should take a look at gold. But there’s another reason uh that they should look at gold that is not part of appreciation, and that is wealth preservation. Uh so in a volatile market, uh yes, uh we hope that gold’s gonna go up, and all the uh indicators say uh it’s uh there’s a positive trend toward that. But at the same time, in a volatile market, uh stocks could go could go down. I mean, in my case, I was mint director during the financial crisis and uh saw the market take a huge hit. And I will tell you that my friends who are working for Lehman Brothers, uh their stock went from for whatever it was to zero, uh, or people who held Argentinian bonds thinking that was going to be uh a good investment, that went to zero. And so uh uh one reason why investors should also take a look at uh gold, particularly those who are saving for retirement, is gold will never be worth zero. And so there should be a part of your uh everyone’s portfolio that uh preserves wealth uh and gold is one of the things that does that.

MIKE BARNES 4:58

Ed, I like what you said that gold will never be worth zero. But why were you at the forefront of liking gold so much for IRAs back 15 years ago?

ED MOY 5:08

Yeah, really good question, Mike. And you know, bottom line is uh one of the questions I get asked, and the starting point is is it legal? And really, gold IRAs uh weren’t created until 1997. So it’s a relatively new product. And when Congress passed the law allowing for the existence of gold IRAs, uh it was a very complicated transaction at the time. You needed a self-directed IRA administrator who would oversee the custody of the gold from where you purchased the gold to the depository that it went into you. You needed to find a uh an entity to sell you the gold. You also needed to um uh deposit that gold in a depository that uh met all the IRS criteria for reporting and safety and accounting and all that stuff. It was a complicated transaction, so no one was really interested in it. When I became uh mint director, uh uh I encouraged um uh it to be much better and easier for the customer. And uh through that uh we really experienced a lot of uh new people taking a look at this and gold companies with USMR taking uh uh the lead on a lot of this is making it easy for the customer. So the customer didn’t have to worry about all of that, but uh company like USMR uh took care of all those pieces. So all the customer had to do was agree to set up the account, fund the account, and uh and execute it. And it was as easy as that, and you didn’t have to put all the pieces together that ended up uh really popularizing uh gold IRAs.

MIKE BARNES 6:58

You talk about it being complicated in so many ways. Brad, I think a lot of people think that rolling over an IRA is going to be very, very complicated, but I know from experience that it’s very, very easy. Can you explain why it’s so easy?

BRAD CHASTAIN 7:11

Yeah, because it’s done every day by financial institutions. Money gets moved around. So most have really streamlined the process. And to Ed’s point, moving into a self-directed precious metals IRA historically, there wasn’t a lot of hand holding along the way. If you wanted to move, if you went to one financial institution and you said, Hey, I’d like to make my money here, they would hand hold your way uh you through the process and in fact do most of it for you. So um that’s really what we adopted here. In fact, the department that literally I’m involved with the liaison department here, they literally sit right outside of the studio here, uh, is a whole department of folks here at U.S. Money Reserve that help with that exact process. We partner with the largest self-directed IRA custodian, uh Equity Trust, as the Precious Metals IRA custodian, and we work directly with our customers to open up their equity trust uh IRA. We work with them to fill out account transfer paperwork. We actually fill it out for them. We send a notary just so that all they have to do is sign the paperwork, and then we submit it to or submit it to equity trust who submits it to their current IRA custodian, and then we follow the transaction for all the way through as the money moves over to make sure that it comes over correctly, and uh so there’s very minimal for our customers to do, and so we’ve really streamlined it uh much like uh traditional financial companies have.

ED MOY 8:31

And I can vouch that that process is painless because I uh have a gold IRA from US Money Reserve, and I initiated that through uh an uh a rollover from my traditional IRA to uh fund the uh gold IRA that I got from US Money Reserve, and it was painless.

MIKE BARNES 8:55

And the best thing is that you’re not doing it by yourself. You have someone taking care of you along the way. Is that right, Brad?

BRAD CHASTAIN 9:01

Yeah, absolutely. You have a dedicated here at U.S. Money Reserve, we hit partner with a dedicated liaison that knows you, knows where your money is coming from, uh, what that custodian ultimately needs in order to process the transfer, and they make sure that all of those ducts are in order and that uh that it is a smooth and seamless and error-free process uh so that you really don’t have to do much on your end at all.

MIKE BARNES 9:26

Now, Ed, did you get the VIP treatment when you did yours, or was it just common folk type of thing?

ED MOY 9:33

You know, uh uh throughout my uh life in both the private sector and public sector, I’ve always wanted to be treated uh just like everybody else. And I made uh that clear as I enrolled into the US Money Reserve Gold IRA program. So uh the treatment that I got, I think uh uh is the same treatment that anyone opening a US Money Reserve Gold IRA account would get, and that is uh white glove treatment. Um but the uh the person who helped facilitate uh my transaction was great, explained everything along the way. I was never surprised. Uh if there was um a period of time uh where I had to wait, uh I was told what that expected uh time was going to be. So everything worked out great. I would say uh the other thing uh just to be aware of talking to the uh traditional IRA uh once they got the request to take some of that money and roll it over to the uh uh gold IRA, that uh could be challenging to some people. And I experienced that challenge even as the former director of the mint, where the uh traditional IRA company didn’t want to see the money under their management be reduced. And so they wanted to go through uh an extra layer of uh security to make sure that uh I wasn’t being uh uh scanned by somebody else and it was a legitimate company and all that stuff. But after working through all of that, uh the transfer went through just great, and uh I’m very happy uh with my account.

MIKE BARNES 11:10

So you’ve gone through the traditional and transferring gold to gold. Was there a difference in either one?

ED MOY 11:16

I’ve done them both, uh, where I took uh traditional uh IRA uh money and then transferred that over to uh the gold IRA, and I’ve also uh had a gold IRA with a different vendor and uh transferred that over to US Money Reserve. Both processes, U.S. Money Reserve, uh, worked out uh great and was transparent and uh easy. Both of them had questions by the prior vendor on whether or not I was making the right decision. Uh ultimately it works and I’m satisfied with how it went.

MIKE BARNES 11:51

Brad, what about annuities? Any difference when it’s something like that?

BRAD CHASTAIN 11:55

There are some minor differences, but an annuity can absolutely be moved to gold. Uh, we help people do that every single day. If you have a qualified annuity or an annuity that’s inside of an IRA, it’s a similar process. Because a lot of people, what we found is really don’t even understand the provisions of the annuity contract. They have a lot of riders and bells and whistles and things added to it that they never intend to use. They didn’t realize they were paying for it. A lot of people are surprised about the performance uh that they’re actually receiving versus what was kind of promised to them in the in the sale process when they were purchasing that annuity. So our liaison team here actually calls the contract provider, the insurance company, gets all of the details about the annuity, helps make sure you understand what it is that you actually own so that you can make a determination if it’s whether or not something you want to hold, if you decide you want to move it. We um help you with the um the surrendering of the contract if you choose to do that. And then just like whether it was in stocks or bonds or mutual funds at that point in time, it’s cash that comes over to uh your new gold-backed IRA where uh you’re able to then add precious metals. And we also help folks even outside of the IRA with that. A lot of people have quali have non-qualified annuities that they just own on their own, and we do the same exact thing. So we will, even though it can’t go directly into an IRA, we will still uh call and get all of the details about how that annuity works so you understand it and we help surrender it, and then you can then if with that money, if you want to own physical gold, we will uh then help you acquire physical gold that actually gets shipped directly to your home for your own storage.

MIKE BARNES 13:34

Brad, is there any circumstance that something gets a little tricky along the way? I I’ve heard that the one thing is that you only have 60 days if a check is mailed to you, 60 days to reinvest that, but you don’t have to do it that way. The money can go straight from account to account.

BRAD CHASTAIN 13:49

Yeah, that that in what you’re referring to as an indirect rollover, where you take a distribution and the previous company treats it as a distribution, like you’re taking the money out and going to be spending it and the tax consequences associated with it and things like that. And to your point, you have 60 days to then get that money into a new IRA and then avoid having to pay taxes when tax time comes on on that distribution. And you’re allowed one of those per year as well. However, that’s not the way we or really any financial institution would advocate to do that. The the much more streamlined ways that we the way that we work with our customers, where it’s a direct trustee to trustee or custodian to custodian transfer where you don’t take possession of the money. You can do that an unlimited amount of times during that year with as many different accounts as you’d like, and um there’s no tax consequences whatsoever in that transfer process.

MIKE BARNES 14:41

It surprised me the first time I did one, but guys, because I had some stock and a 401k from a former employer, and I sold that stock, turned it into cash, and then I wanted to transfer it into gold. And the first thing that my company that held that stock asked me was, Well, do you want me to just mail a check to you? And I was like, No, I just want you to mail the check so I can get the gold IRA immediately. So I think that it seems like the easiest thing to do, and you know this as the IRA strategist at U.S. Money Reserve, is to let U.S. Money Reserve take care of it and talk to the right people and get things done easily.

ED MOY 15:16

Absolutely. And uh given the position of U.S. Money Reserve as being uh known as one of the largest companies that specialize in uh gold IRAs, uh they’ve seen it uh all or a vast majority of potential situations that have come up. And so I just uh relied on their experience and their insight to guide me through the process.

MIKE BARNES 15:40

Brad, I mentioned selling stock. I didn’t have any big gains there, but some people have some big rollover gains they want to take care of. Is there any certain time of the year that it’s best to do that? Or is it just a matter of when you sell the stock, roll it over into gold?

BRAD CHASTAIN 15:54

No, it really doesn’t. It’s a non-taxable event. So it at any point in time during the year you can do it. It doesn’t change the tax liability or anything like that. And it’s impossible to, you know, time whether or not you’re doing on an upday or down day for the market or anything like that over the long run. Those those tend to sort of even itself out as well. So when you do it during the year is is pretty irrelevant from that standpoint.

MIKE BARNES 16:18

Well, you two have definitely reinforced the fact that this is very easy to roll things over, especially into a gold IRA. Ed Moy, Brad Chastain, thanks so much for joining me today. Yep. Good to be with you, Mike. Thank you, Mike. We found out today in this episode how easy it is to roll over an IRA. Nothing to be worried about, and you have experts who can help you along the way. And the future of gold looks good for the near and distant future, a safe haven that can help your portfolio. That’s all the time we have for today’s episode. On behalf of all of us here in the U.S. Money Reserve Studios, thank you so much for tuning in. If you have any questions or you want to learn more about today’s episode, you can call the number in our episode description and speak with our friendly account executives. They’re going to be more than happy to answer any questions you may have about precious metals and their strategic role they can play in achieving a secure and comfortable financial future. I’m Mike Barnes. We will see you next time on America’s Gold Authority Podcast.