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Directed IRA Podcast
A show dedicated to educating and informing self-directed IRA and 401(k) investors on strategies, investments, legal structures, tax rules, and pitfalls. Hosted by tax lawyers Mat Sorensen and Mark Kohler who are also co-founders of Directed IRA & Directed Trust Company (https://directedira.com) where they have provided self-directed accounts for thousands of customers. They cover and discuss Roth IRAs, solo(k)s, prohibited transactions, real estate, start-ups, notes, PPMs, PE/VC Funds, UBIT/UDFI, IRA/LLCs (aka, checkbook IRAs), and share examples and stories from their thousands of clients who have self-directed their retirement for decades.
Directed IRA Podcast
Key Questions When Self-Directing Your IRA
In this episode of the Directed IRA Podcast, Mat Sorensen and Mark J. Kohler tackle the ten most frequently asked questions they hear from clients, investors, and professionals about self-directed IRAs. Whether you're brand new to self-directing or looking to avoid common missteps, this episode offers clear, practical guidance grounded in real-world scenarios and thousands of consultations.
They cover what your IRA can and cannot invest in, how prohibited transactions work, when to use a checkbook IRA or IRA LLC, how UBIT applies to certain investments, and what type of account is best for your goals. If you've ever wondered whether you’ll pay tax to self-direct, how to fund your account, or whether you're too old or too young to get started, this is the episode for you.
Subscribe to the Directed IRA podcast for more episodes diving deeper into self-directed investing strategies. Visit directedira.com to learn more about taking control of your retirement investments.
Chapters
- 00:00 – Introduction to Self-Directed IRAs
- 02:50 – What Can You Invest In?
- 04:05 – Investment Restrictions and Limitations
- 06:55 – The Prohibited Transaction Rules
- 08:40 – Choosing the Right Account Type
- 12:45 – Checkbook IRAs and IRA LLCs
- 18:35 – Taxes, Penalties and Common Misconceptions
- 24:30 – Finding Your Investment Strategy
- 29:20 – Final Thoughts and Disclaimer
Directed IRA Homepage: https://directedira.com/
Directed IRA Explore (Linktree): https://linktr.ee/SelfDirectedIRA
Book a Call: https://directedira.com/appointment/
Other:
Mat Sorensen: https://matsorensen.com & https://linktr.ee/MatSorensen
KKOS: https://kkoslawyers.com
Main Street Business https://mainstreetbusiness.com
Welcome everybody to another episode of the Directed IRA podcast. Excited to be here with you today. My name is Mark Kohler. I'm here with my incredible partner, the CEO of Directed IRA, a trust company himself. Matt. There are some common questions out there. People keep asking and we are so excited about that because questions mean inquiries and people catching the vision of things. But we got some answers for them, I think, today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we want to hit the most common questions. We hear about self-directing. A lot of these come up over and over again on the phones with our team here. Mark and I have done the 10,000 consults as lawyers, answering these questions, because for most people, self-directing your IRA is a new thing. They've never done it before. Most of our customers come here and they're like they've been investing in the stock market, buying ETFs or target date funds or mutual funds, and they're like hold on, I can buy these assets in my IRA and you need to learn a few things. You need to learn more than like typing in a few keystrokes and hitting buy on a computer. So it's not rocket science, but we want to hit some of the common questions for any of you who are interested in this. Maybe some of you just got started and you're like I'm not sure I understand everything on there. We want to hit some of those common questions for you today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think we'll do kind of a speed dating round three minutes each, see if we can do even less than that. And with every one of these questions there's a full podcast or more. A copy of Matt's book is a must. Please go over to Amazon and look at the self-directed IRA handbook and I think it's just an incredible resource for anybody self-directing. You've got to have that book. And, matt, it was funny. I was just talking to one of our video editors yesterday Preston, in fact, I'll call him out and he was like oh my gosh, I was editing your video and when you said self-directed IRA, I was like, oh, that means I can buy any stock I want. And he's like I was blown away. And this is an editor of our videos that was actually listening to that show. And it was really fun to see the lights go off, even for our outside video teams to start catching the vision of this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think it's something that's like for us. It's like staring at you know, we're like looking at this every day, but for most people they just have never even heard about this. And even me, going back 2006, the first time I heard about an IRA buying real estate, I was like I don't think you can do that. I looked it up, talked to Mark, I was like turns out it's a thing. So we know where everyone's coming from on this and don't feel like you've got to master everything. That's why we're here, our team at Directed IRA. If you need a lawyer at KQS Lawyers, we're here to help make it easy. We've got a ton of educational content. But let's hit some of the common questions and I'll just hit the first one out of the gate, if you don't mind, Mark which is what can I invest in? I mean, that's like.
Speaker 2:The first question is so start talking about, yeah, you could buy real estate or a private company. They start thinking, oh, like a publicly traded REIT or a publicly traded real estate company, no, no, no, I'm talking about like the duplex down the street, the single family rental, the little real estate syndication, buying a $5 billion building. You put $100K in. I mean, those are the types of deals your IRA can actually invest in. They can invest in other big private assets, but they can buy these, even these unique little assets. You can buy those, invest in them with your IRA. So know that those are like the common assets I would say real estate, whether it's a rental, a flip, lending on it, a private fund, precious metals, crypto these are the types of assets you can buy. They're most common, but really anything's fair game. We'll hit some restrictions here in a second, but that's the things you can invest in with your self-directed IRA.
Speaker 1:I love it All right, okay, give me number two, let's do it.
Speaker 2:All right. Number two what can't I invest in with my IRA?
Speaker 1:Boy, you gave me the trickier one. I don't know if I can talk about it that long because the list is so short. The one thing you cannot invest in is You've been a lawyer billing by the hour for 20 years.
Speaker 1:Let's get very explicit. I'll kind of give a little list. One is you can't invest your IRA into something that is not allowed under law, like, for example, under federal law. Your IRA, because it's a federal, monitored or I guess you'd say federally regulated tax strategy or tool, cannot invest in a cannabis operation. Now, it's allowed at the state level in a number of states, but it's not allowed at the federal level. So your IRA cannot invest in something that is not allowed under law obviously drug dealing or prostitution or something really bad, but that would even include cannabis because it's not federally allowed. Number two it cannot invest in S-corpor corporations.
Speaker 1:Many of you may be a small business owner with an S corp and you're like, oh, I'm going to invest in so-and-so's S corp or even my own. I cannot do that with my IRA. The third thing and I think we'll probably have a question on this regarding prohibited parties is your IRA cannot invest in something a prohibited party to you owns, like it cannot buy stock you already own. It cannot buy real estate you already own. It cannot invest in something your mom owns or your dad owns that they already own. Now you can go invest together. We'll probably get to that, but I think that's really the list of something that's illegal anyway under federal law S corporations or invest in or buy something that you already own. That would be not allowed, anything, you'd add, matt.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only thing would be collectible items. The tax code used to actually with retirement accounts, you could buy collectibles with your IRA, right, you could buy art even. You could buy a coin collection. You could buy a coin collection, you could buy a wine collection, you know. But those turned into the bottle collections and Congress was like, nah, we're not going to let people buy these collectible items. They're kind of quasi investments with some personal benefit or attachment that some people have to those things. So they restricted collectibles later on.
Speaker 2:So now there are certain things that are approved that could be seen as a collectible, like certain precious metals gold, silver, platinum, palladium. You can buy those Not collectible value type precious metals, but like gold bullion or certain government issued coins, like American Eagles, for example, you can buy those and actually physically own those specific precious metals. So there are some exceptions, but take collectibles off. And then life insurance is a weird one too. 401ks can do life insurance but IRAs can't. But I think the big one, which would be the next question I had, was what Mark was talking about, which is like well, what is the main restriction or rules I need to know when I'm doing this with my IRA, and that is the perfect transaction rule.
Speaker 1:So if that's question number three, that is a big one. Like what do I need to know? Okay, we have a whole podcast with 400 episodes. No, that's a good one. How would you answer that? Like what do I?
Speaker 2:need to know in general, yeah, I think for most people, this rule doesn't matter. It's just the ones that are trying to do something cute or they've got some tricky deals they're trying to execute. So what Mark said earlier is if you already own an asset, you can't sell it to your IRA. So the IRS says something. Or let's just say, congress created something called the prohibited transaction rules that says, hey, these IRAs are special tax beneficial accounts. The government doesn't collect as much money on them as they can on other accounts. So we're going to only let your IRA invest with third parties. It can't go buy an asset from you personally. It can't go buy an asset from your spouse, your parents, your kids. There's these people called disqualified persons.
Speaker 2:So if you're like, well, I wanted to use my IRA to buy property for myself or sell some stock or some options I personally own over my IRA, just know that's not going to work. Can your IRA buy real estate? Can it buy stock? Can it buy options? Yes, it just can't buy ones you already own or anyone who's considered a disqualified person. So if you're like well, man, I was going to buy real estate. I wasn't going to buy already owned real estate, I'm going to keep that, but I'm going to buy new real estate with my IRA. That's totally fine. So that's that. Prohibited transactional. There's more to that, as Mark said. We've got a lot of their podcasts on it. But as a general rule, as long as you're just buying from third parties or making investments trying to find the best deal, not necessarily trying to move assets you personally own or close family members, you're going to be fine on that rule. I like it All right. Number four I'm ready, all right. What account type should I set up? Ooh, ooh.
Speaker 1:Well, that depends on, first, what type of account you may already have. So if you already have an IRA at Fidelity or Schwab or somewhere, then you're going to want to open a self-directed IRA and move that. You kind of have to move it from IRA to IRA. So if it's a traditional IRA, you would open a traditional IRA at our company, the trust company, and then if you had a Roth IRA at Fidelity, you'd open a Roth IRA where it's going. Now, once you get it there let's say you move a traditional IRA you can convert it to a Roth.
Speaker 1:Let's say you have an old 401k from a job five years ago and it's just sitting there. You don't know what's even in it. You finally call them and you're like, oh my gosh, I got 50 grand in there. I'd love to self-direct that. I got a deal I'd like to do with my brother or my sister, or I've got this private company that I'd like to invest in. You can roll it. That would be a rollover in a sense, where you take it from the old 401k and you'd open an IRA for it to go into.
Speaker 1:Now, for the small business owners out there, you already have a solo 401k and you're like, oh, I'm just going to roll it directly from the 401k into my solo 401k. So there's a variety of accounts that you might set up, but the general rule is I want to set up an account that's going to receive the same type of funds. You could open a health savings account. Matt knows I'd love to self-direct my health savings account. You could open a Coverdell education account and start building that. So the world is your oyster here. There's not one particular account. That's the right one. It's what's best for you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and we have many account owners here that have a Roth IRA. They have an HSA, they have a traditional IRA. They might have multiple account types that they are self-directing. The one that we get quite a bit is well, I have a traditional IRA but I want to do a self-directed Roth IRA. Can I do that? Well, yes, but you've got to convert it to a Roth IRA. So we have a Roth conversion app where we open up the traditional IRA to receive the transfer of traditional IRA dollars and then we immediately convert it over to Roth dollars.
Speaker 2:Now remember, when you convert traditional dollars to Roth, you've got to pay tax on the amount converted. So if that was a $100,000 amount you moved over and converted to Roth, you're going to get a 1099 for 100 grand. That's going to go on your tax return, your 1040. And if you're in a 30% tax bracket, you're sending the IRS 30 grand plus whatever state, depending on the state you're in. So now the upside, of course, is that's growing and coming out tax-free later. But that's a very common approach. And the other thing I'll say is Roth IRAs are the most popular account and that's not typical for IRAs in general. If you ask a Schwab or a Fidelity. Traditional IRAs dominate just because most people have saved traditional dollars in 401K plans over the years. But Roth IRAs are more popular with us. A lot of people convert or seem to like to self-direct Roths because they're more in control of your own destiny with a self-directed account right and you're liking that tax-free growth and that tax-free distribution later on in retirement.
Speaker 1:See, and I misunderstood the question, I didn't know. Like, when I go to a restaurant, I always ask the waiter what do you like on the menu, like what's your favorite, instead of what should I do? So those are the like what's your favorite. That would be the Roth IRA what you should do and what's the favorite out. There could be two different things, but that's what we're really good at here. We've got a helpline that during business hours. They're right. On top of that, you can always call.
Speaker 2:Book a call too. Schedule that, if you want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we've got that's. What's unique about our trust company is you're actually talking to human beings, not AI in the United States to boot. So you're really getting and our team is so fun. They're so amazing. The culture at our company is really. It's like a little dot com of young people that just get it. It's so fun. Okay, well, it sounds like you're batting cleanup. I'm going to like take first stab and then you clean that. Give me question five crying out loud.
Speaker 2:Okay, when should I use a checkbook? Ira or IRA LLC? Ooh Well, maybe even what is that? You take that however you want, yeah yeah, player's choice on this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I like that. I'm going to define it and then give one idea, because there are several instances. So I know, matt, this is a good one for you to back clean up on. So what is a checkbook IRA? That is essentially, when you use an LLC limited liability company and you have your IRA instead of invest in some other operation or invest in directly in a rental property or a property or directly into crypto.
Speaker 1:You say you know what? I'm going to form an LLC that's going to be owned entirely by my IRA and invest in that, and we'll do that. We do that every day, every hour of the every day, and so we're going to move that money into that LLC. And now you control the checkbook. That is not prohibited, so you don't have to call us and say, oh, do this, do that. We're going to put the money in the LLC. We're going to give you the rule book you got to follow, but you're going to take that LLC and invest it as quickly as you want in whatever the hell you want.
Speaker 1:That's allowed, and you kind of cut us out of it, which is fine. Your fees don't change. We want to save you time and save you money, and you calling us every time you want to do something can be a pain in the butt. So these checkbook LLCs are really what's going on. It's not a checkbook IRA, it's an LLC owned by your IRA, and that checkbook LLC is there to help you. So, matt, what would be? So then I'll flip it. Now that I've defined it, what are the most common reasons people like that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean I think, just like think of the customer. We've been talking about this with the team here at Directed IRA yesterday. It's like buying a property needs to be rehabbed and then it's going to be rented, right. There's just a lot of transactional stuff happening there signing a contract, closing on it, you know, paying an inspector, then you own it, and then you're like setting up utilities, you're getting insurance, you're paying, you know, buying a new fridge or a dishwasher, you're paying someone to repair it or rehab it. I mean it's just when you're doing it out of your IRA directly. It's just a lot of back and forth and so with the LLC you're in control. It's kind of like how you do your real estate deals already for someone that's like a real estate investor. It's just your IRA funds and that specific LLC. So you know those are the perfect candidates for this, generally real estate investors.
Speaker 2:But even I use an IRA LLC, you know. I mean I mean I sit in the office here every day, I can push the buttons and I know all the process of what you can and can't do, and we definitely make it easy here at Directed IRA. But the LLC is just a lot smoother, even when you're dealing with a title company. It's just, you know, xyz Investments LLC. I got the bank accounts a separate bank account, that's you know. Got my sacred retirement account funds in it. I'm not commingling other stuff with it. So I think it's a really good option for real estate investors. Anyone who wants more control on their investments, like Mark Mark's done cows. That's easier to do in an LLC and go to those transactions than doing it out of your IRA. A lot of private lenders.
Speaker 1:Yep, private lending. I was going to say Matt too, some of you that are crypto investors want to do altcoins. You want to do something that's not on the Gemini exchange, which we support. It is super easy to use. But some of you want to use a different storage method. You want to invest in altcoins, so we'll set up an LLC for you to do that, so your crypto, your unique crypto, can even be owned by your IRA. So that's what a checkbook LLC is all about. It's just making life easier for you to invest in what you want.
Speaker 2:Well, let me just hit the one that I got this morning on my social media on real estate, which was the question I heard you cannot do real estate flips with an IRA, and that was the question. And the answer to that is you actually can do real estate and flip a property with your IRA. The issue is something called UBIT tax. See, when an IRA is investing in real estate or any asset, it's supposed to get investment income like capital gain income when you sell it, let's say, rental income as you own it. But if you're deemed to be in the business of buying and selling real estate, where you're like buying a property every month and flipping it and selling it, that's not investing in real estate, that looks more like inventory, and that your IRA is in the business of real estate. So if you're a real estate flipper and you're like, well, I want to start doing this in my IRA, we're going to look at that and say, well, how many are you going to do in your IRA? If, like, well, I'm going one every month, I'm like I got a problem, you can do it with your IRA, but now you're going to pay this tax called UBIT, unrelated business income tax. That is a 37% tax and that's going to cut into your profits. You may not want to do that in your IRA. So it's not that you can't do it, it's just you need to learn the rules on it. Make sure you're not doing too many where that tax can apply.
Speaker 2:But we have a lot of clients that'll do two or three flips a year in their IRA and then they do two or three next year. Their spouse could do two or three in their separate IRA account, and so we have a lot of clients that do the kids Roths and they're flipping a property and they're kids Roth even. And this could be the same for wholesaling a property or other kind of shorter term transactions. So you can do it, just make sure you understand those UBIT tax rules and how to navigate around it and make sure you don't fall into that trap. Now I will say this even if you fall into that trap, because I have clients whose IRAs do real estate development there's more strategies there. There's the UBIT blocker structure where you can pay a corporate tax of 21%. So there's always a little thing to learn here. But the flip I'm green-lighting that. Just be careful doing too many.
Speaker 1:There we go, I love it. Number seven I've got a good one that I get asked all the time. People say, well, what's the penalty or the tax when I self-direct Because I don't want to take money out of my IRA to buy real estate? I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay, let's back up, slow the train. You know whatever? Back to train. We are not taking the money out of the IRA. There is no tax, there is no penalty.
Speaker 1:You can self-direct a Roth. You can self-direct an IRA. And they'll say, well, I need a self-directed IRA. How is that different than a regular IRA? It's still an IRA. It's just you've moved it to a company that allows you to invest in what the hell you want and they don't take a commission for it and it is self-directed. So the beauty of this is and I want to just emphasize this everyone when you move this money around to self-direct, there is no penalty, there is no tax. Now, if you want to convert to a Roth, there could be some tax. You want to invest in an operational business like a restaurant? There might be this UBIT tax. You've got to work around because you're competing with other normal business owners. You're not investing, but there is no basic tax to just self-direct.
Speaker 2:You get to move the money. Yeah, great question. I saw that question actually on one of your YouTube videos, mark, on self-directing and buying real estate with your IRA, and someone had this long, lengthy comment. I usually don't read all these comments, but I just got bored. What can I say? And it was this long, lengthy comment. It's a penalty to do it. Why would you buy real estate with your IRA and take the money out? And it was like you missed the point, lady. You missed the point, come on, karen. So, um, all right, well, let this here's a good one that goes along with that.
Speaker 2:Maybe we'll come back to here last couple yeah, yeah Is can I use my existing retirement account to fund my self-directed IRA? And that's what most people are doing. So if you're like, well, I have this old 401k or I have this TSP or this 403b or I have a brokerage IRA or an IRA at my credit union that has a CD, can I use that to self-direct? Yeah, but you need to get to a self-directed IRA custodian what we do at Directed IRA, because all those providers before and those accounts they're going to let you buy the menu of stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etfs. But you're like, well, no, I want to self-direct, but I want to use those dollars. That's what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2:You open the self-directed IRA account and then we can move those dollars not taxable, no penalty. It's not an early distribution. Let's say you have an IRA at your local bank or credit union. That's still an IRA, a directed IRA. It's like you went from Charles Schwab to Merrill Lynch. You've just moved the provider of the account and so not taxable, no penalty. And we can definitely do transfers and rollovers of those funds which are not taxable over to the self-directed account. And that's what our team does. We have a whole funding team, by the way, that helps do those transfers and process those things with the old retirement account provider or your existing custodian of your IRA.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it. Great question Okay, I've got number nine. And then you get to round it out with number 10. Okay, number nine.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it's as much of a question it always comes in a weird way, but it's a misconception. They'll say, well, I'm too old to self-direct, or how old do you have to be to self-direct? And I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, you could be 80 years old and still investing your IRA and if you even convert it to a Roth, at that point you don't have to do these required minimum distributions. You may have a parent or a grandma or be coming up on that on yourself where you're like, well, I've got to take money out of my IRA. Well, let's convert it to a Roth. You might be in a low tax rate this year and let's not worry about that anymore. And the beauty is, you can continue to self-direct.
Speaker 1:And we talk about our crypto grandma. I didn't plan on bringing this up, but at a couple of our events she's now family. She literally is related to some of us in our organization. She's just wonderful. But she has come to our events and she's 86 years old now and she has a self-directed Roth IRA and she's trading crypto. She's also heavily involved in the market, and when I want to know what's going on in the market, I call her. I mean like she's up at the crack of dawn. It is so funny.
Speaker 1:But you're never too old to invest in what you know. And then you're never too young. We have clients that have a five-year year old with a self-directed Roth, and that self-directed Roth is in some of their LLCs that are doing real estate. So as long as your kids have earned income, they can open an account. So you're never too old. If you're thinking the kids are too young, or I'm too old or my grandma's too old, oh no, no, no. I'd rather you set up an account for your grandma, fund it for her and help invest it, and you're the beneficiary when she passes away. Now you've got a tax-free ATM because you don't have to wait until you're 59 1⁄2 with an inherited Roth. Those things are golden, so you're never too old.
Speaker 2:Just a couple notes on that, if you don't mind, I think. Remember Roth IRAs, as Mark's given the example on the crypto grandma who used the Roth IRA she doesn't have RMD, she doesn't need to worry about it, right? And generally traditional IRAs. When you reach age 73, you have to start pulling money out of that. So you might need to keep that in mind. Don't go buy, you know, use all of your traditional IRA funds and go buy raw land or some asset or a private fund that doesn't have distributions or income coming off of it. So cause you will have that RMD issue. But again, it's Roth accounts. Knock yourself out, keep investing that and you can do that at any age, even the traditional accounts. We have clients in their seventies and eighties still with self-directed traditional accounts, but they have income on them or they have other IRAs they can use to satisfy their RMD. Okay, drumroll.
Speaker 1:Drumroll Number 10.
Speaker 2:All right, number 10. This is one I get a lot and I know people don't love the answer, but I think it's the most important thing when you start self-directing, which is what should I invest in with my self-directed IRA? You've talked about what I can and what I can't but what should I invest in with my self-directed IRA?
Speaker 1:And I like the way you phrased it. It wasn't what is the most popular, it's what should you invest in Exactly?
Speaker 2:Because that answer is different depending on who you are, and if we look at the largest accounts here, the accounts have 2 million plus at directed IRA. I'm just telling you. They are all doing different things. There is not a consistent theme. If they're doing real estate, they're doing different real estate strategies. They're even in different markets. If they're investing in private funds or private companies, they're different private funds and different private companies. And so all the different things you can invest in, we see clients that have success doing what they know, what they've developed some expertise in, what they've got good at from when they started investing to wherever they're at now as they've learned and grown and built that account over time.
Speaker 2:So the only thing I would say is have patience, find the things that you like and you know that you have conviction and believe in are going to be valuable either from an income or growth standpoint over time, and then focus your investing on those things. Don't try to do everything. Don't try to be a wizard at every asset class, from crypto to oil and gas, to real estate, to private companies, to startups, to venture capital, to private equity. Don't get trapped into that. You'll be a jack of all trades and master of none, and that is one thing I will say that I do not see those accounts doing. They are not doing a lot of different things. They are focused in a few different things that they do really well at.
Speaker 1:So that would be my best advice, and what we like to say is invest in what you know To help you guys, because think outside the box and, for example I'm just going to say it because I was talking to someone yesterday about this that they're helping plumbers of all people. The service industry that's alive and well, the training and the schooling for these trade services. They're booming because a lot of people just aren't going in that direction. Well, ai cannot do plumbing for people, so I mean whatever.
Speaker 1:So I was having this conversation with a client that's really focusing on that industry and selling marketing services and management services and this, and that, well, let's say you're a plumber and you've been funding your solo 401k or you have an old IRA or your spouse does, or whatever, but you're in the plumbing industry. Well, you may want to invest in a startup in plumbing products. You may want to invest in another plumbing business. Now you can't work in that other business. Your IRA may purchase, but you may have technical knowledge or industry knowledge that you can help launch something with your IRA and get in some other verticals. Or you might invest in a truck that could help a plumbing company that is in your market, and so there's a lot of options here. So just know your industry and know where the opportunities are, and 98% of the time, your IRA could play a role.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the other thing you'll see too with some of these, particularly people in the trades plumbers, electricians and stuff that we've seen in clients is they actually are like oh, I work on a lot of remodels, I know what's a good deal and what's a bad deal. I know good investors that seem to make money on their deals and don't, and they start investing in those deals themselves or having their IRA invest in just their network and the people that they meet doing their job and being good at what they do, having know who are the people you can trust, that seem to operate well, and so I think we start seeing that a little bit as well. I've given the example of the dentists. We had a number of dentists come in all at once to invest their IRAs into this mouthguard private company. We have there's groups called meta angels that are doctors that invest in healthcare companies, and many of them use their IRAs. There's tech coast angels, another angel group. They invest in tech startups and they're mostly technology executives or people that work in the technical space or developers, and so they're investing in what they know.
Speaker 2:Now you don't have to do that. I mean, like I'm a retirement account guy, I mostly invest in real estate because it's been tried and true for me and I've happened to make some good connections of people that seem to perform well and that I can trust, where I've been able to get good returns, and so just find your lane and have some patience with that. Know, there's some education there on learning the asset classes, but we just think the self-directed IRAs are something that more people need to be doing. It's not for everybody, but it's for a hell of a lot more people that are currently doing it right now, and so hopefully you found this helpful. Make sure you're subscribed to the podcast too. By the way. There's a lot of other prior episodes where we've dug deep into each of these little topics we discussed here in these most common questions. We have webinars every month, we have events and all these other resources to help you as you're learning how to self-direct your IRA and taking control of your retirement.
Speaker 1:And thank you everyone for listening. A quick disclaimer and reminder this presentation does not constitute an attorney or CPA client relationship and it is always in your best interest to consult competent legal and tax professionals when conducting your own personal transactions.
Speaker 2:We also want to make sure you know this is not investment advice or financial advice. We're just trying to give you education, ideas and strategies you can take to your professionals or conduct your own research on. We'll see you next time.