What is a Check Book IRA? | CheckBook IRA LLC Video

What is CheckBook IRA? Well, simply put, your IRA can invest in anything but life insurance and collectibles. Most people have their IRAs, they’re invested in stocks. For example, you might own stock in Walmart or GM. But in our case, we want more flexibility. So, what we do is we create a company and your IRA buys that company, just like it would Walmart.

The only difference is it buys all of it. It buys the company 100%. It’s the only owner of the company and the company is an LLC that we set up. You then are named the manager of the LLC. You have certain authority that is given to you by the custodian that allows you to make instant decisions within certain guidelines.

Those guidelines, they’re not difficult to follow. It’s not hard to do. You’ve already made the money to have your IRA. You’ve already had a successful career. So, it’s not like you can’t do this. Some people try to make it seem like it’s difficult, but it’s really very easy. Just a couple of rules you have to follow and the custodians there and we’re there to make sure that you stay within those guidelines.

Now, you are the manager. If you find an investment that is not the usual investment – maybe you want to buy and sell some real estate, or go into a joint venture with someone, or maybe buy some options on some property, or do forex, or buy foreign real estate, or possibly buy some American gold eagles and store them at home as an asset of the LLC that is owned by your IRA – you can certainly do that. You have the authority to make the decisions, sign the documents, write checks.

If you wanted to buy tax liens, for example, you could go down to the courthouse and the IRA LLC would buy the tax lien and you, as manager, would make that decision and write that check, or go get a cashier’s check if you need it. When it came time to sell the tax liens, you would be one to make those decisions.

The money would stay in the LLC and that LLC is owned, by the IRA. So it gets all the wonderful IRA tax treatment and you’re able to build up your retirement, doing investments that other custodians won’t let you do. Not all custodians like the CheckBook IRA because, frankly, they don’t make as much money off of you as they do their normal clients and they don’t like that.

But, there’s nothing wrong with it. It certainly is legal. It certainly has precedence. It gives you the freedom to invest in things that you would like to invest in, and gives you the opportunity to move quickly, instantly with your retirement to make those decisions.