Investing with Your Retirement Account

[Chauncy Gray]

Greetings Everyone,

Has any one ever created a self-directed IRA and used it? From your experience, would you mind explaining what you did to accomplish this? I am not 100% sure how it works, and I would greatly appreciate it if you can share your experiences. I am looking to opening a new IRA/Roth IRA account, and build it as a source of capital for investing in property.

On another note, can IRA's be used for tax liens (or is it only the self-directed IRA's)?

[Dmitriy Fomichenko]

@Chauncy Gray

In order to establish a self-directed IRA first you need to find a custodian allowing alternative investments. Open an account with such custodian, initiate the transfer of funds from your current IRA to fund the new IRA. Then you can start making alternative investments. All assets would be title in the name of the custodian, something like this: ABC Trust Company, FBO Chauncy Gray IRA 1234567 (the numbers represent account number). All transactions must flow through the custodian, some investors find it inconvenient so they opt for IRA owned LLC (aka Checkbook IRA).

You can certainly facilitate the discussion here, but @Justin Goodin is correct: this topic has been discussed on the forum many times at length and you can learn a ton by reading those discussions.