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Directed IRA Podcast
The Directed IRA Podcast, hosted by attorneys Mat Sorensen and Mark J. Kohler, is the leading source for investors navigating the world of self-directed IRAs and 401(k)s. As co-founders of Directed IRA & Directed Trust Company (directedira.com), Mat and Mark have helped thousands of clients invest in alternative assets using tax-advantaged retirement accounts.
Episodes cover topics related to self-directing retirement accounts, such as Roth IRAs, Solo 401(k)s, real estate, private equity and venture funds, promissory notes, private placements (PPMs), start-ups, IRA/LLCs (Checkbook IRAs), and the UBIT/UDFI tax rules. The podcast also addresses prohibited transactions and shares real-world examples from investors who have successfully self-directed their retirement for decades.
Whether you're a seasoned investor or just getting started, this podcast offers practical, expert-level insights into building wealth through self-directed strategies.
Mat Sorensen is an attorney, best-selling author of The Self-Directed IRA Handbook, and CEO of Directed IRA & Directed Trust Company, a leading self-directed IRA custodian with nearly $3 billion under administration. He is a national expert on self-directed retirement strategies and a Senior Partner at KKOS Lawyers. Mat also co-hosts The Main Street Business Podcast along with Mark J. Kohler.
Mark J. Kohler is a CPA, attorney, best-selling author of six books, and a nationally recognized authority on small business tax and legal strategies. Mark serves as a Senior Partner at KKOS Lawyers and Board Member at Directed IRA Trust Company, which manages over $3 billion in assets. As the founder of the Main Street Certified Tax Advisor Program, Mark has trained thousands of CPAs and Enrolled Agents nationwide, helping millions of small business owners better navigate tax and legal strategies. Mark also co-hosts The Main Street Business Podcast along with Mat Sorensen.
Directed IRA Podcast
Gold Hits a New All-Time High: How to Buy Gold (and Other Precious Metals) in Your IRA
Gold is breaking records again—and smart investors are taking notice. In this episode of the Directed IRA Podcast, Mat Sorensen and Mark Kohler explain how to buy physical gold, silver, and other precious metals inside your IRA, the right way.
They walk through which metals qualify, how purity standards and approved coins work, and what IRS rules you need to follow for storage and compliance. You’ll also learn how a self-directed IRA opens the door to these alternative investments, so you can diversify your retirement beyond stocks and mutual funds.
If you’ve ever thought about owning real gold bars (not just ETFs or paper gold) inside your IRA, this episode breaks it all down step by step—no myths, no confusion, just clear guidance from the experts at Directed IRA.
Chapters:
00:00:06 - Why Precious Metals In IRAs
00:24 - What You Can And Cannot Buy
02:52 - Purity Standards And Qualifying Coins
05:47 - Self-Directed IRA Setup And Funding
08:42 - Storage Rules And IRS Compliance
11:24 - Costs, Dealers, And Next Steps
13:18 - Education, Disclaimers, And Wrap-Up
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 the Directed IRA podcast. My name is Mark Corner. I'm here with the amazing Matt Sortenson. And today we are talking about how to invest in precious metals inside your retirement account. I mean, this is exciting. You could buy gold, silver, the cubic zirconian. Is that how you say it? You can buy that, right?
SPEAKER_00:You can't buy that one. We're going to go through the list of what you can and can't buy. But gold is on the list, and gold hit new highs. So for any of you that have already been investing in gold, congrats to you. You've been making some good money.$3,800 an ounce right now is where gold was last trading at. So, but you can own this as an asset class. And I know a lot of people think of gold as maybe being or precious metals sometimes being like a counterbalance to the stock market, but the stock market's hitting new highs, and we have gold also hitting new highs. Um, we can get into the reasons why on that maybe and speculate here. But the good news is that's been an asset that's been performing well. So we want to talk about how can your IRA own this? Like the actual physical metal, like the actual gold bar, how can it own that metal um in your IRA?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and a couple of insights here. We once interviewed someone here on our podcast that actually had a gold bar. And I was like, I want to see this thing. Because, you know, James Bond and you know, Goldfinger, these things were massive. And uh he held it up and it was like the size of a cell phone. I'm like, what? That's a gold bar because that's that's a pound right there. I'm like, geez. Uh but uh it was pretty cool. But the don't listen to anyone out there. There's a lot of bad information about the myths of you can't buy gold because you can't, you know, put it in your house and you can't do this, you can't do that. And and so it's really some bad information has put a chilling effect on this. But you can do it and do it right is super easy.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, and so if you're someone that loves precious metals or believed in that asset class, invested in it, we want to talk about how your IRA can do this. Now even your Roth IRA, traditional IRA. Um, we're gonna go through a number of things, like what precious metals qualify, how you actually purchase them, how do I get this account set up so I can actually buy precious metals in my IRA? I'm not doing that at Fidelity. Like maybe I can do buy the ETF, but I can't buy the physical metals. What are the storage requirements of this? And then some of the kind of do's and don'ts and some of the things that we've seen over the years. So let's start the first point on this, which is what precious metals qualify here.
SPEAKER_01:Matt, does it put does the coins and pirates of the Caribbean do those word Jack experts? It depends.
SPEAKER_00:It depends. Let's talk about it here, actually. That's serious, that's a good question. Um, that movie was fake though, but just you know, don't hate to burst your bubble. But you know what I mean. Don't you start talking about Santa Claus? I mean, yeah, but we'll go there. But let's talk about the gold coins. So um, gold is one of the qualifying metals, silver, platinum, and palladium. Now, the two most popular that we see in IRAs are gonna be gold. Now, I'm going to my own book here, by the way, the self-directed IRA Handbook, because I have a chapter on this, and there are specific requirements on, let's say, gold. There's two things you that meet the gold. It's not just any gold you can buy with an IRA. It has to either be meet purity requirements. So that coin in Pirates of the Caribbean, if it met the purity requirement, it counts. Or it can be qualifying because it's from the a government-approved mint or a government, let's say. So, like for example, the US Mint puts out American Eagle coins. Those automatically qualify. All right. So either way, either the purity requirement or um a government-issued type of coin.
SPEAKER_01:And the Iraqi dinar would not qualify.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's currency. So that is on paper, that is absolutely worthless.
SPEAKER_01:I know. It sounds like gold. Well, we had, oh my gosh, do you remember those scams 10 years ago?
SPEAKER_00:Everybody was buying Iraqi dinar is going to revalue. It was like, all right, what are you smoking?
SPEAKER_01:But yeah, um I think this is a really good thing, though, to diversify into as well. And and I think that it's very realistic and doable. And gold has just been performing so well.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So let me get into the purity requirements here for any of you that want to geek out on this. Gold must be 99.5% pure. Okay. That's the minimum they call fitness uh or fineness requirements uh for gold. Now the second one is silver. That that's the second most popular precious metal we see people buy. And we have people that own hundreds of millions of precious metals in their IRA here at directed IRA. Um, and silver could be the same thing. You could have a government-issued silver coin, um, or if it's a bar of silver or something like that, it could even be in coin format. Night bullion is what they may call it. 99.9% is the fineness requirement for silver. Now, I've never seen anyone buy platinum or palladium. We might have some people's accounts that own them here. They're technically in the tax code as something approved that your IRA could own. Now, generally, the IRS has restricted collectibles from your IRA and said your IRA can't own collectibles. Like it can't own a coin collection, like a collectible coin. It can't own art. It can't own a wine collection, you know, it can't own those things, collectible car, but it could own precious metals. And there's a specific exclusion in there that says in this restriction that says, hey, these are collectibles you can't own, but you can own precious metals, gold, silver, platinum, palladium, as long as they meet these requirements.
SPEAKER_01:All right. Now, I don't know in our lineup here, but I feel prompted to say this to everybody right now. Now that you know you can do this, the the big step of how is getting the self-directed IRA so that you can do this. So we're gonna break that down as well, but don't get stressed or frustrated right now if you're like, well, I want to do this. Um, where do I start? Well, it starts by having the right type of IRA that allows for this.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. And that's not gonna be the Fidelity IRA or the broker dealer IRA, right? So that's what we do as a directed IRA. We have a self-directed IRA. So let's say you have an old employer 401k of traditional dollars, or you got a traditional IRA at Charles Schwab, or you know, what we will do is you'll set up a self-directed traditional IRA at directed IRA, and then we let you invest in whatever you want. You want to buy real estate, you want to buy crypto, you want to buy precious metals. We don't restrict you to just publicly traded assets. So we'll let you buy these types of assets. Some people call them alternative. I don't know how alternative gold is, but um, but you can buy these in your in your IRA. So we open up the account for you, you'll transfer that money over, and our team does this for you. We'll make a transfer request to Merrill Lynch or Charles Schwab, wherever your money's at. That money pops into your IRA with us, still a tax-qualified account, tax preferred. But now we don't restrict you on what you can invest into. And you say, hey, I want to buy precious metals. Now you'll find a dealer. We don't sell metals, okay? Well, we're here to let you invest whatever you want. I don't care. You want to buy precious metals, you want to buy gold, you want to buy silver, you want to buy start invest in a startup or buy crypto. Uh we don't that we don't we don't have a uh horse in that race, so to speak. We just want you to be able to invest in what you want to. And so um now we do have dealers that we can refer you to if you need assistance with that, with someone that's like, well, who can I buy precious metals from that'll work in my IRA? Um, because you want to make sure you're getting the right precious metals that qualify. So um, but but our we can refer you in the right direction there. So, but so that's what we're doing here every day. So we can help get this account open, get it funded. Um, and then remember, this is your retirement account. You're building long-term wealth in this, right? You're building this up. You're you would do this because you believe in precious metals, you believe in gold or silver, whatever it might be, as being more valuable over time and going to be growing your retirement account. So you have a retirement account you're looking forward to, right? With a big account.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Now, some of you've bought precious metals before, and you might go to a dealer and go pick them up and go home and bury them in the backyard or put them under your bed or something. Maybe in the safe or something like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, that's good, I guess. Mark's stuck on Pirates of the Caribbean. He's like, you know, X marks the spot here. A treasure chest, maybe. Yeah with the goblet made of gold.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Um, so when but that's because you own it personally, you can be involved in that whole process of buying it, storing it, and looking at it at night and petting it, whatever you want to do with your gold. But when your IRA is buying it, you want to go through the right type of vendors that know you have an IRA and that can provide custodianship or holding it for you in this. And there's not a lot of options here. You want to make sure you do it right, but it's it's actually quite doable and not that expensive. Maybe Matt, walk us through an example of that.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, there's a storage requirement for precious metals. So the tax code has a provision in it for IRAs that says when your IRA owns precious metals, they must be stored at a custodian that is a bank, trust company, credit union. Okay. So there must be a third-party storage place for those precious metals. And the IRS has come out pretty clearly and said you can't store these at your home. Like there's some guidance out from the IRS and kind of some buyer-beware kind of um taxpayer notices that have gone out from the IRS because they've cracked down on some people that have bought precious metals in their IRA and stored them at home. If you do that, the IRS deems that a distribution. They consider once those precious metals get to your house and they're in your personal possession, they deem that to be a distribution. So no storage at your home. So we use a third-party storage facility. Um, a lot of companies in the space use. You can even go in there.
SPEAKER_01:I thought we were storing all of this gold in the basement of our building. That's where you were going.
SPEAKER_00:No, no, definitely not. This this facility that stores it, literally, it knows for every employee, it knows if you have a filling in your tooth or not. And if you went to the dentist that day and you didn't update it, you will get scanned in and out when you go in and out of this building, and they'll be like, there's metal on you more than normal.
SPEAKER_01:Wow.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, like it is like is literally like a Fort Knox and lockdown, which is the type of place you probably want your metals. Okay. I don't want them in the treasure chest, you know, in the backyard. So, um, but this is that's a requirement for the precious metals owned in your IRA. They must be stored um according to the IRS requirements, which does not include your home. Now, you can have some personal possession of them during transportation if that was necessary, um, where your IRA bought them and you were somehow transporting them to be deposited properly. Generally, that's what you're just gonna have is you buy them from a precious metals dealer, they're gonna ship them to the depository that stores them, or that depository, frankly, many of them have a lot of the metals in the industry. They're already sitting on a shelf in there, they're just moving it to your name in your IRA as opposed to who just sold it to you.
SPEAKER_01:So what's what can people expect in a cost? Um, let's say they bought$10,000 worth of gold or uh$15,000. What would the storage cost be?
SPEAKER_00:So it could be$100 to$200 annual storage fee. Now we have uh, you know, a self-directed accountant directed IRA is$4.95 a year that you can invest in any asset. Now we do have a specific if you're just prying precious metals, there are some different different pricing on that uh where it could be less. Uh, but you're gonna have an annual storage fee to the facility of at least$100 a year. Uh so just plan on that. Um, so if you're buying the$10,000, just know you're gonna be paying at least$100 for that and maybe$300 to$500 a year for your IRA account fee with us. Now that's all consolidated into our account fees, and we handle that for you when you have a precious metals IRA with us. So um, and we, by the way, like I said, I'm referencing my own book here on some of these points. There's a whole chapter in my book on this. Um, we have other resources on our website about the qualifying metals and the rules, and we got a team here, of course, that can help you as you're sorting this out. And if you're interested in buying precious metals, like we talked about at the very beginning, this has been an asset that's performed very well. Who knows if it's going to continue to grow from here? We're not trying to give you investment advice, but we want to let you know this is an actual option in your IRA. Like the actual physical precious metals, you can own them in your IRA.
SPEAKER_01:Well, it's and it's uh a short podcast today or broadcast because it really is that simple. It's exciting. It's something you can do uh in just a few days, getting an account open. And we've got incredible uh resources there to help you do it quickly. Uh, an online uh app and on your uh desktop version, you can be opening an account tonight and started talking with uh precious metal metal dealers tomorrow. So it's it's pretty cool. Um, but anyway, thank you everyone for being here and being a part of this amazing mission and journey that Matt and I are on to kind of educate the world about this uh self-directed retirement account option that so many people don't know about. And we just feel so passionate that it unlocks true retirement building that people could only dream of. And we are just an honor that we are one of your podcasts you listen to. Please share it with your friends and family. Give us a thumbs up, five star, 10, whatever's, you know, just 10 out of 10. Yeah. And uh we'll be back next week with and a lot of podcasts sometimes in between on additional topics to help you out and your journey too. Thanks so much. 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_00: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.