Directed IRA Podcast

Investing in Alternative Assets Under $25K with Your IRA

• Mat Sorensen and Mark Kohler

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Visit altassetsummit.com to learn how to invest in Alternative Assets.

(More links down below.) 

You don’t need $100K to self-direct your retirement. In this episode, Mat Sorensen and Mark Kohler outline 15+ real-world strategies for investing $25,000 or less using your Roth IRA, Traditional IRA, Solo 401(k), or HSA. From real estate deals and startup investments to crypto mining, mobile homes, equipment leasing, and even cattle, Mat and Mark break down the opportunities that everyday investors are already using to grow their retirement accounts.

Whether you're just starting with $5,000 in a Roth IRA or rolling over an old 401(k), this episode reveals how to make smart, creative investments in alternative assets—without needing a six-figure balance. You’ll also learn how to structure these deals legally with IRA/LLCs, avoid prohibited transactions, and understand the compliance rules that protect your tax-advantaged account.

Chapters: 

00:00 - Introduction to Small-Budget Self-Directing

02:10 - Cryptocurrency and Crypto Mining Options

06:20 - Creative Real Estate and Partnerships

10:00 - Mobile Homes and Startup Investments

13:45 - Turo, Oil & Gas, and Livestock

22:45 - Equipment Leasing and Final Opportunities

32:16 - The Power of Roth IRAs

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



Speaker 1:

Welcome everyone to the Directed IRA Podcast. This is Matt Sorensen. Joined in studio. It's good to have you back. Thank you, sir Mark J Kohler. Yes, the great and powerful, and we got a pretty cool topic today.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, we're excited about this. There are so many people that want to self-direct and they're just kind of getting their legs under them. They've got $5,000, $10,000, maybe up to $25,000 in a Roth IRA. Well, what can I invest in now to get the greatest return so I can maybe get into some larger investments? And many of you that are starting college students with IRAs, your children with Roth IRAs and we love KidRoth and we love KidRoth.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, we love all these account types, you know. I mean whatever account type you have, we want to let you know you've got options on how you can invest it. Don't think you have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars. So Mark and I are going to rattle off self-directed investments you can make for 25K or less. I know a lot of people think, ah, self-directed is not for me. I got to get $100,000, $200,000 in, and that might be true for certain investments.

Speaker 1:

Sure, you're going to buy a rental property or maybe it's a fund that has a minimum investment amount. But we're going to hit a pretty extensive list here the list has been growing as Mark and I started talking about this of things that you can do. So now, of course, what we're talking about if you're new to this is self-directed IRAs. This is an IRA that can invest in a private asset. We're not talking about mutual funds or stocks. Obviously, you could go buy like one share of Microsoft on the New York Stock Exchange right now with your brokerage IRA. That's not what we're talking about. Go do that if you like that and you're good at it. We're not against it. But we just want to let you know you can invest in these private assets. You can buy real estate, oil and gas crypto startups, partnerships.

Speaker 1:

I'm going to say and you don't have to have hundreds of thousands of dollars for it.

Speaker 2:

I'm with you, all right, okay, great intro, did I?

Speaker 1:

show too much skin too early.

Speaker 2:

There's an art. You've got to wine and dine me.

Speaker 1:

I was trying to throw a little tease out, get you interested. A little teaser, a little teaser. A little teaser.

Speaker 2:

Okay. Well, let's go for it and let's rattle off these ideas. Well, I'm going to go with the first one Pretty straightforward Cryptocurrency. Many people have asked how do I get started even investing in crypto? I think on Venmo you can buy Bitcoin for crying out loud, but it's. There's a lot of platforms for people to just buy cryptocurrency individually, but there's only a few platforms that allow you to use self-directed IRAs to do that. There's a lot of influencers out there promoting other or two or three different platforms, but I'll tell you number one right here at Directed IRA. It's where my crypto Roth account is and I'm going to be blunt. I've been in XRP this year Unbelievable 300% return.

Speaker 2:

There's no guarantees or promises made on this podcast that you're going to have the same ROI. I could lose it all tomorrow, heaven forbid, but cryptocurrency is very doable. I'm going to go with number one on that. You can open up a crypto Roth IRA and trade on an app on your phone within 24, 48 hours, depending on how quickly you can fund the account. So that's really exciting. That's my number one. What's yours?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I'll say that one is one that we've seen a lot of people just open up an account for the very first time and make a one-year contribution of $7,000 in a Roth IRA or maybe it's a backdoor Roth IRA because you're high income and you drop seven grand in kid Roth IRA we talked about. Maybe this is your health savings account. You got 10 grand in. I mean, you can invest those dollars into crypto. And even me, I bought crypto. I bought three BTC when it was 2,500 bucks per BTC.

Speaker 2:

7,500 bucks, now you're just getting cocky.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, that was in 2017. And so I shot a YouTube video on that. But, like, that was like not a large amount, okay, but I got in the game Now. Of course, crypto could have gone, you know, rock bottom, just like all investments. We just want to give you the concepts, all right, of what's possible, all right. Next one I would say is wholesaling, okay, in the real estate space. I think that one's very common, that we'll see.

Speaker 1:

Many of you might be a real estate investor and we, a lot of real estate investors, are attracted to self-directed IRAs because they know real estate and they feel like why don't I invest in what I know and I'm good at and I'm doing every day? Why am I buying a mutual fund with my fricking retirement account? But they're like, oh, I bet I've got this old 401k with 20 grand in it. You know, is it? What can? I can't do a buy a real estate property, but what can I do? Well, you could wholesale a property, Okay, or you get a property under contract and you sell that contract for a profit and you take the gain on it Okay, so you'd be wholesaling. We'll get into some other real estate options there, but that's just a simple one. You can even wholesale a property with your IRA.

Speaker 2:

Okay, I'm going to stay in the crypto space and I'm going to want to go with crypto mining. I'm actually doing this in my broth as well. It's creating ordinary income. So you're going to use some strategies like a block or C corporation and things like that for another day. We've done an entire podcast on this. In fact, I should say that all these topics that we're going to rattle off today, we almost have individual podcasts dedicated to them.

Speaker 2:

But crypto mining you can do with any platform, uh hardware that has a video card. I've had people set up uh, crypto mining with nice hash right on their high speed laptop that they game on. So if you've got a gaming computer with a video card, you can sign up an account with NiceHash and start making money in the middle of the night and it's not that expensive with electricity costs. Now I've got a CPU with multiple video cards. I do it off-site.

Speaker 2:

You can't do this in your home or on your own computer, although you could do it personally. You'd set up your self-directed IRA, typically open an LLC, buy your hardware, get a third party to manage that unit and you're off to the races. But I've been crypto mining for over two and a half years now and I've almost got a whole Bitcoin earned inside NiceHash over this last two and a half years, so that it's very, very powerful, and I started my crypto mind. For 20 grand, I mean, you buy a CPU for about seven grand and you're buying your video cards for three, four grand or less. You can buy them used. Anyway, get into that space, check it out if you're into crypto.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. Another one I'll say is just creative real estate deals. That's probably another next most popular one I'm not going in any particular order, but that's very common actually is someone will go buy real estate. Maybe they've got 10, 20 grand in their IRA and they negotiate creative terms to acquire the property Maybe some seller financing, maybe they buy the property subject to an existing mortgage, so it's only a little bit of money out of pocket for them and we want to talk about I want to get into some partnership structuring and some other ways you can bring in other people into a deal.

Speaker 1:

This is just negotiating a creative deal to acquire the asset, real estate being common, and maybe it's something you're going to flip, maybe it's something you're going to hold. Buy and hold Doesn't matter your exit strategy on it, but you can get in Again if you know what you're doing. As a real estate investor and many of you real estate investors I know are listening you're like yeah, I do that already personally. I'm like well, why don't you do that in your IRA? Just take 10 or 20 grand from that old employer 401k or let's drop seven grand in to a backdoor Roth IRA or Roth, depending on your income level and you can go do a creative deal.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, now I've done this. Personally I still have a rental property. It's probably still worth 40 grand. It's a low-income housing section eight property in the large urban areas. I know that there's a lot of low-income housing type projects that some real estate investors that's their niche. So I had a contact that said that was doing this and said, hey, mark, do you want to in on one of these deals? And I was like yeah, and so I took my health savings account. This is almost nine years ago and I still own this asset. And I did. I think it was $4,000 down seller financing. The property costs 40 grand. And now I have this little meth lab just create. Is that my inside voice? Now I have this little meth lab just. Is that my inside voice? I have this little low-income housing project that I do not. My property manager will not allow me to drive down the street, at least at night, whenever I'm in town.

Speaker 1:

He's like uh-huh, but anyway it's been and the rent's paid in cash and that never bounces. No, no, no, that rent check doesn't bounce, no.

Speaker 2:

So I make a couple hundred a month in cash flow inside my health savings account self-directed health savings account. So don't think like you have to go buy $100,000, $200,000, $500,000 property. You can get some creative acquisitions done because a little secret here pro tip you can use financing in your retirement account to buy something so you can use leverage. So if you can get a 20% down deal, that's 20 grand to go buy a $100,000 deal and you might get seller financing for that type of acquisition. So learn about that. We got a whole podcast on that.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, all right. Next one I want to hit is some partnership structuring using a multi-member IRA LLC. Maybe this is your Roth IRA with 10 grand, your old employer 401k with 15 grand. Maybe you have a health savings account with five grand. Your spouse has an IRA with 20 grand in it a traditional IRA. Well, if we combine those all into one LLC, we might have 50 to a hundred grand there.

Speaker 1:

Sorry, I couldn't get the amount exactly on all those numbers. It's somewhere between 50 to 100. Okay, all right, but we pull that amount of money into the LLC. Now we can maybe go do a deal we couldn't do individually, and so multi-member IRLCs are a structure we'll see a lot of people use, particularly family members or maybe some business partners or other people, and there's a lot of variations on this I want to hit, but just the first one is your own accounts, or maybe your own family, your spouse, maybe your kids' accounts, combining those together into an LLC to go buy a specific asset that you couldn't buy individually on your own. But if you combine your resources and accounts, you can take it down, okay.

Speaker 2:

Love it. I'm going to go to number six mobile homes. And I actually helped a father's son do a mobile home project up in Idaho and they both had a Roth IRA about 20 grand each and they were able to acquire a mobile home for about 40 grand in a park where the park manager is already there up on blocks, whatever they do skirt it and this was already cash flowing about 700 a month. And this was already cash flowing about 700 a month. And they had paid in cash for that mobile home. And they're praying for a hurricane or tornado because then you get a new mobile home with insurance. That was very insensitive of me, but anyway, the point is you can buy mobile homes inside your Roth IRA and rent those.

Speaker 2:

And if you need an extra partner I wanted to piggyback Matt's last point partner with your other family member to get over that hump, to get into some of these assets that maybe are 30 or 40 grand. Very easy to do. Our law firm does them every day. Get on directediracom in the chat and say I need help with that LLC setup or get to kkoslawyerscom. You can come from either angle and end up at the same spot. Those roads will merge and we're going to get you the right account with the right LLC to do something like that. But I love the mobile home idea.

Speaker 1:

Yeah. One other one to think about is investing in startups. There are a number of startups, and some of these are on crowdfunding platforms. There are other ways that people are raising capital.

Speaker 1:

Right now we see at least one of these a day coming through at Directed IRA. Wefunder is one that's pretty popular. King's Crowd is one that kind of analyzes different startups and has a private fund opportunity and a lot of these you can do at $25K. A lot of private real estate funds or other funds might have $100K or $50K minimum, but the startups they try to get a little more lower entry point because many of them use what's called crowdfunding, which allows anyone to invest. You don't have to be an accredited investor, but it's a lower dollar amount that you put in. So they're raising from a larger crowd smaller amounts, rather than a few select uber-rich that have a low, that have a higher minimum and if you want to have fun with this, just seriously google crowdfunding and, uh, you're going to see multiple platforms.

Speaker 2:

Click on them, set up an account and start shopping. I mean, there's fun videos of a lot of little inventors that they've got their killer idea and a lot of times they'll take five grand as an initial investment to get started in a crowdfunding project and you might find something you're passionate about and help promote it on your own social media platforms, yada, yada. But you can then couple that opportunity by calling Directed IRA and say, hey, I found this deal over on this crowdfunding site. I've got my new self-directed Roth IRA. How can I combine those two? And customer service will help with that. All right.

Speaker 2:

Number eight Turo. Huge fan of Turo. Turo is a wonderful site. If any of you haven't been there, it's like Airbnb for vehicles and you can get into a city and find out that Hertz has maxed out or Avis and you go over to Turo. It's where private individuals can rent their car for the day or the weekend weeks, whatever. Well, your Roth IRA, again under 25 grand, could partner with someone or buy a vehicle inside an LLC. Pop it on Turo and there's a lot of people that have little Turo businesses that are looking for that next vehicle. We have clients that have six or seven Turo vehicles and they're making 100100,000 a year. And if you say, hey, can I put my vehicle from my Roth IRA in your pool Because you can't self-manage that Turo account, but you can use someone to help manage your Turo vehicle inside your Roth IRA. Super powerful, Lots of fun. Love Turo. Check it out.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, another one I've seen small dollar amounts for. This is probably another one that happens every day almost is oil and gas. Investing in mineral rights, royalty type strategies where there's not exploratory drilling. It's not the intangible drilling cost type stuff, but it's an established well that's producing, and there's a number of people out there that provide it. You'll meet them at the Alt Asset Summit. By the way, alt Asset Summit is coming up October 16th and 17th. Pardon the interruption here for the commercial, but you've got to be there If you're like.

Speaker 1:

Guys, how do I invest in this stuff? How do I understand these different assets? You guys are talking about Every one of these different types of assets we're going to be talking about at the Alt Asset Summit, having expert speakers there. So get on over to altassetsummitcom. We'd love to see you guys there. But one where I have two speakers is on oil and gas, and I know at least one of those you can invest in for as little as 10 grand. You get an actual deeded interest in the oil and gas rights that produces a certain amount of oil, so you get a revenue stream on that that goes back in and builds up your retirement account, and so don't think you need to be coming in with a hundred grand or more to go do those types of investments. You can do that at the even as 10 grand or more.

Speaker 2:

Okay, number 10. And I think you're going to be impressed. I waited until number 10 to throw this one down. Okay, I, you saw it.

Speaker 1:

I see it, you exercise a lot of restraint.

Speaker 2:

I did, I, you know. Many of you that are regular listeners know that I do have a few cows in a health savings account a Maha, you know, grass-fed, hormone-free beef. With my cows that are owned inside my health savings account, and my wife and I we pooled two accounts to buy 21 cows. The reason why I bought 20 is you have to have a bull In your herd, so that's the number one. Like you need the one, the one, yeah. So I got 10 pairs moms and calves For with one bull. One bull.

Speaker 1:

And that bull knows how lucky he is right. Oh yeah, that's his whole job.

Speaker 2:

And yeah, in fact, just the other day my rancher called and said your bull got out again. And I'm like, how does he get out? He's like, oh, there's some cows over in the other field he's very interested in. He finds a way. I'm like, ah, damn. Anyway, so we have 21 cows.

Speaker 1:

A whole other story we can talk about birds and the bees on one of our episodes, if you guys would like, I just think on the bull thing. It's just so funny. It's like the life of the male cow the bull is pretty interesting. Because cow the bull is pretty interesting? Because it's like you're either like on someone's hamburger in and out, or like you're the bull and there's 10 other cows and you're just all day long.

Speaker 2:

I think it's fascinating, so I'll just say one more note on it. Some of you are like what in the hell? So when we bought our 10 pairs which was 20 cows within about two months my rancher called me up and said hey, next time you're out here because these aren't on my land I've got a rancher that's got already cows, so he's like you can throw your 20 cows in my herd. And so that's the trick, because you can buy cattle, any of the 4-H type animals, and let a 4-H kid raise it for you. They need to have a cow or a lamb or a pig for their 4-H project. Your IRA could buy the animal and let them raise it and you're making money in your Roth IRA. I was at the auction a month ago and freaking. Some of these lambs and cows and pigs are selling for three or four grand and you're buying them for 500 when they're just a little whatever you know, calf.

Speaker 2:

So, anyway, my rancher called me up and he goes hey, one of your 10 calves, this bull calf, he's legit and he's like he's. He is literally head and shoulders above all the other nine calves yeah he goes, you're not taking that one to auction in the spring.

Speaker 2:

You're going to keep that one as a bull and you can sell it for probably 4X. So normally we bought these. So we bought them for about three grand. These pairs, that's 1,500 a cow. In the spring next year they'll sell for about three grand as an auction. So your calf now pays for the pair and then you're off to the races. So this one, this bull, will probably fetch six to seven grand.

Speaker 2:

So anyway, the point is, if you're in the ranching industry, you can have your Roth IRA, play with that, and I want to play in that industry and I want to make this point Whatever industry you're in, that's where you want to look, yeah, so if you're in the real estate industry, fine. If you're in the medical device industry, you might see some sort of new startup in the medical device arena that no one else would see. That's not insider trading. You know. Your Roth IRA might see your buddy inventing some idea and you're like, hey, can I get in on that? And this is what Peter Thiel did with PayPal. His buddies were starting PayPal and he's like can I put my Roth IRA in the deal? Okay, billion dollars later it's paid off. So think outside the box, and so I use that livestock idea is one that I want all of you to kind of just uh screenboard for me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, um, I'll give another one on not as exciting as cows and bulls, you know, um, but maybe you know pretty interesting. We see it quite a bit as notes. So you can be lending out of your IRA to a borrower that maybe needs 25 K, right, maybe it's a real estate investor that needs that for some rehab expenses, a bridge loan, a closing bridge loan, it could be. Yeah, transactional funding, where you're lending a real estate investor needs that for some of their closing or just even earnest money to get a property under contract. Another one we'll see.

Speaker 1:

Even Jared, you know he's my assistant here at Directed. He's got his Roth IRA. He's talked about this before. He's like he put 25K in on a loan with someone else, so he was on the note for a certain percentage of interest. Let's say the note was $100 thousand dollars, his Roth IRA was 25,000 of that. It had a 25% interest in the note as a whole. So it was one note, one borrower. But you can have multiple lenders on a note and so that's another way is thinking either lending at that amount or partnering with some other people where your percentage of that note to go get that deal. And how did he get that? By the way, he's like 26 years old, right, I don't know 27.

Speaker 1:

Maybe he just would go to our events and talk to people. I think that's one thing I think a lot of people are like well, I don't know somebody that's selling cows. I don't know anyone that does crypto mining oh, this crypto IRA. Where do I do that at? I Anyone that does crypto mining? Oh, this crypto IRA. Where do I do that at? I don't know what crypto to buy Oil and gas. I don't know about that Real estate.

Speaker 1:

How do people find those real estate deals? How do people find these people that partner up? Well, you, freaking, take control of your situation. You get engaged, you start learning, you get out there, you start learning. What do other investors do? Go to our events and stuff. Meet these other people that are doing deals like this, that have done it before. There's no secret sauce to this. We're not promising that you're going to make a bunch of money. We just want to let you know you have options with your retirement account besides just a stock bond or mutual fund. But it takes a little initiative and you got to feel some of these assets. Maybe you're drawn to one of these and you're like that does sound like it's down my lane.

Speaker 2:

Great yeah, learn about it. Go meet the people that are doing that stuff. Well, and I want to use that as a springboard for my next one. I won't use that word again. Number 12, equipment leasing. I was talking to an excavator the other day and a lot of excavators with their front loaders, skidsters, they've got earth movers, all these different equipment names. I don't know Mini excavators, big excavators I got I bought a new mini X, by the way, it was so fun.

Speaker 2:

Okay, Anyway so, but the he's like. I was talking to him because I, you know, as soon as someone that I'm working with knows like, hey, what, how? I've heard you, I seen you on your podcast, what do you do with that? And I go, well, you and he's like, and, just like you said, it just literally made me remember that conversation. He's like I don't know anything about crypto, I don't know anything about this. I'm like what do you do with your equipment? Well, I rent it out when I'm not using it. Why don't you have your Roth IRA, buy another Skidster by you Skidster and run it out to your buddies when they need it? I can do that, yes, so equipment leasing is a big deal. I had a client that built out a trailer that he lived in LA and they built out a trailer with lighting and gaffing equipment and they would rent that trailer to production crews that would do filming for sets around the LA area, and that's very, very common.

Speaker 2:

A lot of studios do not own their own equipment. They rent it. Very common A lot of studios do not own their own equipment. They rent it. And so if you're in the film industry, you can buy that equipment and rent it to different production houses and it's like who you know? And these, these movies. They spend so much fricking money when they make a movie. It's insane. And so they literally took their Roth IRA, formed an LLC, bought a trailer and started filling it up with equipment and as they'd make rental income, they'd buy more equipment until that thing was just beautiful and they were making 30, 40 grand a year in a trailer that it took them about 25 grand to build out initially. So it was just super powerful. So, equipment leasing big deal. You're going to need a blocker C corp. You're going to need to continue to learn about these strategies by engaging on the podcast. At the very minimum, meet with one of our lawyers. They'll help you build that out. But I love equipment leasing.

Speaker 2:

Okay, number 13. What do you got Water rights? I got a client right now that's trading water rights Okay and big deal, because he's in that market. He's in that industry and water rights are a big deal in the West and when people go to buy land to develop, they have to go find the water rights and you can't develop land without having the company water right and there's a lot of families that inherit water rights and they live 10 states away and don't even know what they're sitting on, and so you can go in and buy this water right from people that I've discovered. They were selling them on Facebook. Even people like I got this water right for my grandpa. I don't know what to do with it. Well, if you're in the know, you're like oh, I'll give you X, and then you can turn around and sell it for Y, and so this buying low, selling high is kind of a neat thing. You got to try that.

Speaker 1:

Is that how you?

Speaker 2:

make money. Yeah, I know you're kind of more into the buy high, sell low but it's really the other way around.

Speaker 1:

Oh, okay, it's really quite powerful. So I give the less amount of money and then someone gives me more. Yes, and I keep the difference. Yeah, and that's how you make money. I know it's genius, okay.

Speaker 2:

Okay, Number 14, boats. I have a client down in Florida that took his IRA and went in on a yacht with three or four other people and then they rent it out through a. That's a private platform, much like Airbnb, Outdoorsy, Waverly, and so they're renting. If you want to go down into the Florida Keys and rent a yacht for a day or a boat or anything, there's all sorts of websites for that Well, who do you think owns those boats? It's people trying to generate passive income. So if you have, you want to go in on some sort of boat project. This may be your alley. You know, I've got a client up in Seattle that does tours out on a boat across Puget Sound. It takes people over to Mercer Island and out to all the different islands and blah, blah, blah. So boats can be a wonderful type of equipment, again, much like the RV, the mobile home, and super powerful.

Speaker 1:

Now keep in mind, on any of the boat leasing or the Turo, the cars.

Speaker 1:

RVs up next, you know, rvs. Up next, you know, is you're not personally having use of these and you're not the boat captain Okay, you're not the one out there doing the tours and you want to use that LLC we use the IRLC structure with the blocker strategy in there to avoid something called UBIT tax. And so you want to get over the law firm at Kikula Sawyers If you're going to do any of those, even the equipment stuff. I've had a number of clients do the equipment leasing. One thing I'll say on that for any of you doing like equipment leasing in particular cause it's more of a long-term thing versus like Turo or the boat, where it's like someone uses it and they bring it back tomorrow or they have it for a week you know what I mean.

Speaker 1:

But if you're doing equipment leasing, a lot of times it's to a contractor for six months or they're really like leasing it for a couple of years, kind of like a car, because there can be this UBIT tax on leasing of equipment. What we did is this client who was in the equipment leasing business already is. I said you're not in the equipment leasing business anymore. When it's your IRA doing these deals, you're in the equipment finance business and so his retirement account would go buy the equipment and basically sell it to the contractor, lease to own type thing. It's actually it was a sell agreement.

Speaker 1:

It's actually kind of like if you read a lease on a car, it sounds like a loan document.

Speaker 2:

You know what I mean? Yeah, it does.

Speaker 1:

And it cause. It has a buyout right at the end too. So it's the same thing here. You just re-engineer the numbers. He had a lien on it, right and so, but it had a certain rate of return. He was going to get that's way above. You know, this is about 15, 20% of what he's getting on it, because he got his profit built into the sell price but the contractor couldn't go out and acquire that anyways on his or her own. So that client has a multimillion-dollar IRA with this. But some of those pieces of equipment are the 25K. You can start small and get big. I'm sure he's got a lot bigger types of equipment too, but there is a little strategy and structure in it as you start delving into each one of these little ideas.

Speaker 2:

Okay, last one, number 15. It's going to be on this vein of vehicles and RVs. I'm going to throw that out and I want to give a cautionary point before I say 15. The theory here, all kidding aside, is buying something that you know in your circle of influence, your circle of friends, your industry, whatever you're in, and reselling it. That's all it is.

Speaker 2:

And when you have an LLC funded by your IRA, you can have access to the bank account to serve as the buyer and seller with limited sweat equity. You can buy and sell, but you can't manage service and there's going to be some boundaries there and the lawyers will walk you through, depending on how aggressive you want to get. You might need a third party to play a role in that, much like we talked about having a boat captain. You know, take care of your investment. So, with that said, you also cannot buy and sell collectibles. So I've had people that have wanted to buy and sell comic books, rare bottles of wine, la la la, where they can get a deal on art and then resell it Great margins. But you cannot buy and sell collectibles inside your retirement account.

Speaker 1:

Now the last you want to comment on that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I got one more. Oh, okay, so I was just going to say we're going to get to 16. I love it. So 15,.

Speaker 2:

I've had clients buy and sell RVs and also rent RVs the Airstreams you know those silver ones in the movie the Accountant. I love it. Accountant 2 is not as good. Do you see Accountant 2? I do not see it. Yeah, I think Ben Affleck killed it in number one. But anyway, the Airstream is one of those iconic RVs that if you can get a hold of, one older ones, they are vintage and so I've literally got a client that is buying and selling RVs and also renting them. Now, with 25 grand you might get in there to a pop-up trailer or some of these vintage RVs and you have a shop that fixes them up. You resell them.

Speaker 2:

I had a client that was doing this with vehicles Ford F-150s During the COVID period. Trucks were hard to come by and all the dealerships were down on inventory due to supply chain issues. So I had clients that were buying and selling vehicles and going through again. That's what they knew best. So buy low, sell high. Think of what personal property around you you could do that with. Meet with one of the lawyers. Get an LLC set up with your IRA. Maybe even pull up with a friend or of the lawyers, get an LLC set up with your IRA. Maybe even pull up with a friend or family member to get that extra inertia you need. But 25 grand is very, very doable.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I'll say the last one, and this is like last but not least and it might be the most obvious one I can't believe it took us to get to. It is precious metals.

Speaker 1:

Oh man, I can't believe you forgot that you can buy gold and silver, platinum and palladium. Most people buy gold and silver, but you can buy that with your IRA. Now, mcilvaney precious metals we had David McIlvaney on from them. We did a podcast just a month or two ago, so go check that out. They're a great place as a resource to look at precious metals. They've been in the space for a long time, but you can buy 10,000, 20, 25,000 worth of precious metals in your retirement account.

Speaker 1:

Now, precious metals have done really well the last couple of years. Who knows what the future holds on that. Everybody has their own perspective on it. But we've had a lot of clients that are buying precious metals and I've actually seen that become more and more popular in the last couple of years. But that's again something. You don't need to buy 100K of it. You might buy 10, 20k, maybe half of it's in silver, half of it's in gold, and they definitely have some strategies and thoughts on that. So check them out. They'll also be sorry to have another commercial interruption. David McElwain will also be speaking at the Alt Asset Summit. Oh, I want to come and see him there. I'll be there anyway.

Speaker 2:

He's going to dive into it even more Because what was super cool is when they say do you want a pound of gold? I'm like you, think of James Bond and Goldfinger. You know, yeah, Goldfinger. No, it's Fountain Blue Miami. I know, yeah, yeah, you know, that one. I love that. I love the pilot. Can I say her name Never. I love that. I love the pilot. Can I say her name? Never mind Something to work. But anyway, the 70s, you can just get away with anything.

Speaker 1:

The James Bond era. Let's keep this rated for everyone.

Speaker 2:

Is that crazy. You can't even talk about character names in a 70s movie anymore. Okay, but I said to David I was like how much is a pound of gold? You think of these big bars that were in james vaughn shows? It is like it's smaller than your cell phone, like a pound of gold is like your cell phone. I'm like really, he's like, yeah, and you showed one and I was like, oh my gosh, that is super cool and the gold industry does not use the word pound, it's ounces or kilograms.

Speaker 1:

much like other products that you can buy, kind of like drugs, that's what.

Speaker 2:

I was saying Do they have a dime bag of gold? Can I get an eight ball of gold please?

Speaker 1:

Just saying I'm just saying that's how it is described and how much for the quantity you want to buy. It's not in pounds. Pro tip I want a kilo. If you want to sound cool when you're buying precious metals, don't ask in pounds, okay, so ask in ounces can I get a kilo?

Speaker 2:

do you want that in white or gold? What?

Speaker 1:

are we talking here?

Speaker 2:

I don't know my precious metals guy, who are you?

Speaker 2:

oh my gosh. All right, so we can combine one of these into like, like. I think the vehicles and RV can go between Turo and equipment flipping and leasing. That gives us a solid 15. And I'm freaking loving this 15 things you can invest your Roth IRA under 25 grand into and notice how we kept manifesting the word Roth. That would be ideal. Do not stop investing if you don't have a Roth IRA, but, if possible, start this whole process with a Roth IRA. You can put $7,000 in this if you're under age 50, $8,000 if you're 50 or older. Get that Roth IRA going and if you have a traditional IRA, you might want to convert it to Roth before you start this process. Because people, we want you seeing 10%, 15%, 20% returns or more. Because people, we want you seeing 10, 15, 20% returns or more. And with the rule of 72, you can be doubling this money every four or five years Insane.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and I think if you're sitting in that traditional account, as Mark said, you can convert to Roth, and it's always best to convert to Roth when you have a smaller account balance anyways. Then work at it and grow it. Let's get all that growth to come out totally tax-free later in retirement. We love to Roth and roll here, as we say, and thanks for everybody for hanging on this podcast. We wanted to get all these different ideas out there. There are so many more. That's the nice thing about self-directing your IRA is it's up to you. You can be as creative as you want. There's very few things you cannot buy with an IRA. Okay, the list is limited. We have that in other podcast episodes, but hopefully we just got some ideas flowing.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, it has to be legal.

Speaker 1:

It has to be legal. Okay, you can't buy collectibles, life insurance and S corporation stock. Everything else is fair game. Okay, we talked about privative transaction rules too. Just to note, you can't personally be involved in managing the asset in terms of like the boat captain but you can oversee it and have some oversight, of course.

Speaker 1:

So, again, hopefully there's some great ideas for you to start thinking about things you can be investing in and gives you another step in the right direction of taking control of your retirement Absolutely, and we're going to see all of you at the Alt Asset Summit.

Speaker 2:

It is absolutely critical you're there. I'm not kidding If you want to see bigger returns in your retirement account, you've got to be there to come just hang out with people doing this. I meet someone every time where I'm like, holy crap, you're doing right.

Speaker 1:

Don't you? I know it's always crazy Some of the stuff you hear people investing in. They're having success and it's always like the great ideas that you get there from what other people are doing and it's real too. It's also not like this, like ideas and just like you could do this or you could do that. No, there's people that are doing this like already, and lots of accounts that we have are very successful people. If you're a directed IRA customer, make sure you're there, in particular, because we're having a little customer appreciation event on Thursday with some of our most successful clients, some with seven and eight figure accounts that you can hear from that have done crazy little deals like this for 25K themselves. So, and if you don't have an account at Directed IRA, get on it. Open one up so you can come to that little special session.

Speaker 2:

See everyone next week for another episode. I think it's open forum next week. Please get to the website as well. Check out the link below and submit your questions. We as well. Check out the link below and submit your questions. We'd love to have an opportunity to answer any of your questions from today. See you next week 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 1:

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.