By J.P. Dahdah | Vantage IRAs
Are you among the many Americans who have watched their retirement portfolio ebb and flow with the stock market, without experiencing meaningful returns? If so, you are not alone. In fact, most people just place their money in an IRA/401K account and forget about it for years, hoping that over time it will magically produce the balance they need to live financially independently.
Unfortunately, this strategy can yield horrible returns and leave you with a smaller nest egg than you need when you retire. On the other hand, Self-Directed IRA investors take control of their financial journey and understand that hope is not a strategy.
We believe there are three key components that embody the Self-Directed IRA investor’s mindset and are critical to achieving financial success.
- Thought, Education, and Planning. Think of investing your hard-earned income as a business that requires thought, education, and planning. Just as you wouldn’t glance over a few resumes and make a half-hearted hiring decision in your business, you need to spend time analyzing potential real estate investment opportunities and evaluate these situations as you would any business opportunity.
- Embrace Your Financial Responsibility. Once you come to the realization that you are the only person who is really concerned about your long-term financial success, you can claim responsibility for your investments. I know this can feel uncomfortable and even scary at times because we can often doubt our financial acumen and lack the confidence to make our investment decisions. Investment opportunities do exist in stocks and bonds. Still, there is also a plethora of alternative investments such as real estate, private equity, private notes, and private company opportunities, which offer diversification and stable returns. The key is to understand that you are the individual responsible for generating sufficient retirement income, not a mutual fund portfolio manager you have never met. Therefore, you can direct your own financial destiny by placing the onus on yourself.
- Know the Tools. Establishing a Self-Directed IRA that allows you to invest directly in real estate strategies you understand and are comfortable with can be the first step in taking complete control of your financial future. Keep in mind that I am using the word control, not work. Being a Self-Directed IRA investor doesn’t mean that you have to do all the work yourself. It means that you must assume full responsibility for the decisions that matter most. This type of IRA allows you to actively manage your chosen portfolio holdings, with the goal of finding multiple ways to earn returns beyond traditional stocks, bonds, annuities, and mutual funds. Self-Directed IRAs provide access to alternative investments and allow you to create a diversified retirement portfolio that can generate optimized, non-correlated, risk-adjusted returns to the public and volatile offerings on Wall Street.
By changing your investor mindset, you can invest by design and not default, generating the appropriate returns that will allow you to retire timely and comfortably.
For more information about Real Estate IRAs, please visit www.VantageIRAs.com.