There are several episodes where we have discussed how you can invest outside the stock market with your 401k or IRA. But did you know you could even invest with your Health Savings Account? How could you use these strategies to build your wealth faster than with your financial advisor? We sit down with John Bowens of Equity Trust to learn how to use retirement plans to put money in real estate. He also discusses UBIT and why it is not always a bad thing.
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How Can You Invest With Your 401k IRA Or HSA With John Bowens
I brought on somebody that I know is going to be a treat for many of you because if you’ve ever been wondering, you’ve got this IRA and you’re wondering how you can do something different than just what’s available on Wall Street, you don’t want to do mutual funds. You want to do something more on Main Street, for example. Maybe you want to do something even in the crypto space or wherever it might be if you want to have more control of your money, especially if it’s trapped in an IRA.
That’s exactly what we’re going to talk about with John Bowens. John is with Equity Trust. If you know what equity trust is, they are like the 900-pound gorilla of the self-directed industry. If you’re ever looking to move your money over old 401(k)s and IRAs, these guys are some of the biggest players in this industry and can help people have a self-directed IRA that they can use to control their investing and put it almost wherever they want. A little bit about John, he’s the Director of Education and Investor Success. He’s taught over 60,000 investors. He’s done hundreds of workshops and seminars. I’m excited to have him on here because he is a self-directed IRA expert. John, welcome to our show.
Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to share some material and content with respect to being able to invest in, as you said, alternative investments. These are investments in real estate, private equity, venture capital, gold, and silver. It could potentially be cryptocurrency. I’m a real estate investor myself. That was my upbringing. I was brought into self-directed IRAs fifteen years ago. My background academically is very much like yours, Chris. I was brought up with 60/40 models, 60% public equities, and 40% fixed income. Put your money away into a retirement plan or outside of a retirement plan, put it into these types of investments, set it, and forget it.
Something didn’t make sense to me because I had been involved in real estate. I saw the opportunities that existed in real estate and I thought to myself, “Is that 60/40 model accurate?” When I say that, I’m not necessarily saying that for viewers because all the viewers out there are coming from different places, from an investment perspective, and certainly, I’m not an investment advisor here to provide any tax, legal, or financial advice. I’ll say, “That model didn’t make sense to me.” I started to look at how I can use my IRAs, 401(k)s, and other retirement plans to invest in real estate.
Stumbling across an equity trust company fifteen years ago, my mind was expanded because I had been conditioned all along to only using my IRAs and 401(k)s, or that Americans only had access to public market investments with their retirement plans. The ability to be able to invest in real estate partnerships, multifamily real estate, various commercial real estate opportunities, single-family residential rental properties, and private money loans secured by real estate expanded my mind to the capabilities and the opportunities, and the ability to be able to use these self-directed retirement vehicles, IRAs, 401(k)s, Roth IRAs, and SEP IRAs in a tax advantage capacity.
Chris, you’ll hear me talk about this as compounding interest in the absence of taxation. A lot of people ask me, “What do you do? How do you help people?” We help show people how they could potentially get to their retirement goals and their financial goals in a shorter period of time. It doesn’t work for everyone. You have to put work into this. I want to be very clear about that.
If you follow the process and you have a good investment execution plan, you’re leveraging compounding interest in the absence of taxation, eliminating that variable, you’re compounding effects become magnified, which means you could potentially get to your retirement goals and your finances in a shorter period of time. That’s my philosophy here at Equity Trust as a thought leader. It is helping investors get to their retirement goals and their financial goals in a shorter period of time through these self-directed alternative asset investment strategies.
That’s one of the things I love. We have this great partnership that way because, when we’re working with clients one-on-one, we’re helping with the strategy and everything, but we’re not going to set up these self-directed IRAs. We’re not going to try to deal with all that minutiae or process. That’s very specific to what you guys do and then being able to find and operate and figure out where to put that money is key. You’re right. You can make way more money than you could gamble in the markets.
I first heard of a self-directed IRA back in my stock trading days. When I used to do that, I remember people telling me, “You can trade with your IRA.” I said, “No way. Really? I don’t have to buy a mutual fund? That’s incredible.” There are a lot of things. To give people an idea, when we talk about real estate a lot on this show, we talk about alternative investments like real estate, even things with oil and gas, land, our mineral rights, or things that way. We’ve even got things we talk about with franchises and those things too. Tell our readers here, what are some of the strategies we can do, or maybe even better, what can you not do with these self-directed IRAs?
I’m glad you asked the question that way, Chris, because, going back to 1974, when the law was created, the law tells us what we can’t invest in, not what we can invest in. In other words, it’s exclusive rather than inclusive. We can’t invest in assets like collectibles so rare artwork or just artwork in general. I make the joke that Beanie Babies can’t invest in collectibles with your IRA account.
I can’t buy those Donruss baseball cards from 1990.
I get questions often about historical vehicles that could be considered a collectible. It’s not permitted in the IRA. The best way to think of is the IRA should be used for investing in assets that have intrinsic value. Now, our clients are interested in hard assets and hard investments. Real estate would be number one. Also, private placement investments or private direct investments where they’re taking in equity ownership or limited partnership ownership in an entity that is investing either in other companies or possibly property or other types of, if you will, hard assets. I’m glad that you brought it up.
I’m glad that we talked about collectibles because it’s important to understand that there are some coins that you can purchase with your self-directed IRA. The law permits certain coins, for example, a gold or silver eagle. You could own physical gold or silver in your self-directed IRA. That’s the first thing for people to understand. The law is exclusive rather than inclusive. In terms of real estate, private equity, venture capital, and investments in even very unique assets like farms. I’ve heard of tropical tree farms in the past. I’ve heard of investors using their IRAs to invest in oil and gas and land development. There are all these different ways in which you can use your self-directed IRA to invest.
Rather than investing in the traditional financial markets, you can self-direct your retirement plan. Now, as far as self-directed, keep in mind, Chris, that’s an industry term. You said, “Self-direct into a trading account.” There are plenty of financial institutions out there that will allow you to self-direct an IRA into mutual funds, ETFs, and individual stocks. What most of those financial institutions won’t allow you to do is to self-direct your IRA, Roth IRA, or SEP IRA, or maybe for small business entrepreneurs out there. You have a solo 401(k).
They’re likely not going to allow you to self-direct into a property, a real estate partner, or an investment in an oil and gas working interest. Those investments are going to be off-limits. It’s not because of the law, it’s because those firms don’t have the infrastructure, technology, personnel, and support systems to allow you to invest in those types of alternative assets. That’s where you have to find a specialty custodian that has the tools, pipes, plumbing, and personalized support to be able to facilitate those unique alternative investments in your self-directed IRA.
To give you one example for all readers to wrap their heads around the possibilities here, back in 2020, I’m a real estate investor. We buy single-family residential properties. We also do private money loans to investors, and that’s what a lot of our clients do as well. I’ve learned a lot from our clients over the years. Back in 2020, I bought a property for $63,000. I know that there are some folks here that are in different markets. You’re probably thinking, “How in the world did you find a property for $63,000?” Keep in mind, I’m in Cleveland, Ohio.
We bought a property for $63,000 in March 2020, and I used my self-directed traditional account and my self-directed Roth IRA. For those that aren’t familiar, it’s tax-deferred versus tax-free. I got a traditional IRA, which is tax-deferred money. Money goes in tax-deferred. It grows tax-deferred. I take it out. I pay some. I put after-tax dollars in my Roth account. It grows tax-free. I take money out. I don’t pay any taxes. I try to do as much as possible with my Roth IRA because of compounding interest in the absence of taxation.
We bought this property for $63,000. It had 2 units. We had $750 in rent coming in on both units. We bought the property knowing that there was about $15,000 in deferred maintenance. The seller was a motivated landlord. They were someone that wasn’t doing a good job keeping up with the deferred maintenance. They weren’t doing a good job keeping up with the tenant management.
We stepped in. We stabilized the property. We had 3rd parties that were doing the work for us in terms of the physical labor. That’s important to understand with self-directed IRAs. Years later, we sold the property and we made a $35,000 profit. Now, the annualized cash-on-cash return on investment was 32%. In May of 2022, we closed. We sold the property. We made a $35,000 profit.
What’s important for viewers to understand mechanically here, Chris is that $35,000 in profit went back to our self-directed IRAs. That’s my self-directed IRA. When I say we, I mean my wife and me. We do everything together.” I call my IRAs her IRAs, even though they’re in my name. That’s important to understand out there.
We bought this property, sold it, and made a $35,000 profit. We had $35,000 in our self-directed IRAs. We had no Schedule E. We had no special tax return. We saved $5,000 in taxes on that one individual transaction because there’s no long-term capital gains tax or recaptured depreciation on a rental property that we own in our self-directed retirement plans.
We took the money that we made on that transaction and rolled it into a private money loan to a real estate investor. This is a 3rd-party house flipper whom I met in Cleveland, Ohio, who has a track record. We did our due diligence. I made a $100,000 loan to this house flipper and we charged 13% per annum.
Now, my rates are better than the hard money lenders, and I’m happy because I’m able to make a better rate of return than what I can make in the traditional market right now. We closed on that loan. The loan was paid off. It was about 8 and a half months. The loan was originally written as a 12-month loan. Remember this was a house flip. We loan our money out, we get our money back with interest, and then we move on to the next deal. We made 8.667%.
We loaned out $100,000. We made about $8,600 in profit. That $8,600 in profit, we paid 0% tax on. That’s important for people to understand when you’re if you’re a private money lender or you want to get involved in private money lending. Interest income outside of an IRA. If I were to have used my non-IRA money for that transaction, I would pay taxes on that $8,600 at my tax rate, state and federal, I’d be about 30%, $0.30 on every $1. I wouldn’t get to keep $8,600. I would keep maybe only about $5,000.
In this case, because I’m doing this in my self-directed IRAs, all of that profit goes back into my self-directed accounts and I pay 0% tax. I have an extra $3,000 and some change of buying power, investing power to put into the next transaction. When I talk about compounding interest in the absence of taxation and how powerful this can be, that’s a great starting example.
Now some people are like, “That’s only $8,600. What about the transactions where I can take $5,000 and turn it into $500,000?” There are transactions out there like that but I want to be realistic. This is a marathon for me, not a sprint. Can I talk about real estate options where people have taken $2,000 and grown it to $20,000 on one transaction, or a real estate joint venture where an investor put $24,000 into a deal, partnered with another investor, and made over $66,000, generated in his Roth IRA, a $42,000 profit tax-free? Of course, there are more home-run type transactions like that, but I like to talk about the singles and the doubles marathon to ultimately get us to a good financial situation.
That’s important too. You can do some big deals and I know there are guys. We’ve got friends like Eddie Speed. He’s doing note investing and stuff. He’ll even set up Roths on his grandkids. He’ll go and turn the little amount of dollars into big dollars when they do all their note investing and whatnot. You’re right. The base hits, especially for most of us.
Those of us who want to be more passive investors, where we might be buying into real estate. It could be a property, syndication, or all kinds of things like that. If it’s more passive, naturally, we want those base hits to ensure that we do not make a return on our money, but get a return on other money too.
The return on the money is, in many cases, as important as the return on the money, and from an IRA perspective, the tax privileges of these self-directed retirement plans are powerful. It’s important for people to understand that there are different types of accounts. I mentioned the traditional and the Roth. One is tax-deferred and one is tax-free. One of the most common questions I get is, “John, I have a 401(k) with a previous employer. How do I self-direct this? What are the basics of getting started?” It’s pretty simple. The individual would connect with a custodian so they can do their DUE DILIGENCE.
From an IRA perspective, the tax privileges of self-directed retirement plans are powerful. Click To TweetI represent Equity Trust as a self-directed IRA custodian. We would love to have you come to us, but certainly, we would encourage you out of respect to all the audience members to do your due diligence. You’ll find a custodian that makes sense for you. You’ll open an account with that custodian, and then if it’s a 401(k), you’ll roll over the money into the self-directed traditional IRA because most 401(k)s are tax-deferred. You go tax-deferred to tax-deferred traditional IRA.
The most common question I get, Chris, is when I roll the money over, am I paying taxes or penalties? The answer is not. You’re moving dollar per dollar from one account to another. There are no taxes or penalties. If there were taxes and penalties to self-direct your IRA, we wouldn’t have started this business. People would not use a self-directed IRA because they wouldn’t need it or it wouldn’t be tax-advantaged. You roll the money over.
For folks that already have an IRA, maybe they have an IRA at one of the traditional brokerage houses or their local bank. All they need to do is open up a self-directed IRA and then transfer money from their existing IRA into the equity trust IRA. It’s traditional to traditional or Roth to Roth. If you have a SEP IRA, you could move that over. Maybe you have a simple IRA, or maybe you don’t have a 401(k) because you work for the federal government and you have a thrift savings plan. That’s okay. You leave your employer. You roll the money over into the right self-directed IRA. Again, no taxes or penalties.
It is important to know, and I’m sure a lot of the readers are going to ask this question. What if I’m still working for the company that sponsors the 401(k), the 403(b), or the 457 of the TSB plan? Seldom while you are under the age of 59.5, can you roll the money over into an IRA? They’re not going to let you do it. Now, 59.5 is the qualified retirement age, which is important. That’s when you could start taking money out of your IRA or 401(k) without a 10% premature withdrawal penalty. Often at 59.5, even while you’re still working for the company, they’ll allow you to roll the money over into an IRA.
Coming from your background, Chris, I knew you would know that. A lot of people don’t. What readers want to ask for is in-service withdrawal. Ask if you can do an in-service withdrawal. If you don’t know, call your plan administrator. Talk to your HR department. They can tell you whom you need to call, and then ask if you can do an in-service withdrawal. Don’t be disappointed when you’re under 59.5 or if they tell you that you can’t. Most people are not going to be allowed to do this.
The last thing that I should mention, Chris, is a lot of people are very interested in the Roth IRA because of the unique tax advantage. We put money in after-tax, and it grows tax-free. We take it out. We don’t pay any taxes. Some people are misinformed that they either don’t qualify for a Roth IRA or that maybe a Roth IRA doesn’t make sense because you don’t get deductions on the money going in.
You have to think about whether are you going to pay more in taxes on the seed or more on the crop and that’s going to depend on your circumstances. I will say from a lot of the investors that I’ve worked with that are investing in real estate, they’re making a return on investment that is significantly greater than the traditional financial markets.
Let me mainly be very clear and say that opening up a self-directed IRA in investing does not necessarily mean you are going to do better than the traditional financial markets. We need to be very clear on that disclaimer. If you’re an active investor or you’re getting involved in investing and you believe through your acumen, your control, and your efforts that you can drive a better rate of return in real estate compared to the public markets, then we’re having the right conversation and you’re joining the right show and you’re talking to the right people.
Through this, if you’re making these significantly higher returns, you may be able to look and pencil it out and say, “It makes a lot more sense for me to not get a deduction because I would ultimately be paying more in taxes on the crop than I would on the smaller seed.” That’s the philosophy or theory behind this. I would encourage folks to sit down, crunch the numbers, and look at their situation to determine what makes the most sense for them. If you’re told that you don’t qualify for a Roth IRA, there could be an opportunity for you.
This opportunity could close in the future. If you’re tuning in to this show in the future, make sure you look at the most current rules, but there’s something called a backdoor Roth contribution. If you make too much money, the government tells you, “You can’t contribute directly to a Roth IRA.” Here’s what you do. You contribute first to a traditional IRA or a tax-deferred IRA, and then you immediately convert over to a Roth IRA.
Additionally, if you have tax-deferred money from a 401(k)-threat savings plan 403(b), whatever type of account it is, you can convert that money over into the Roth IRA. You have to pay taxes, and that amount is going to be added to your ordinary income. You’re going to have to pay taxes on the money you convert over, but you pay your taxes so that going forward, you don’t have to pay taxes.
Chris, hopefully, that helps everyone understand the difference between those 2 types of accounts and how folks can look at a Roth IRA, and how they can still be involved with a Roth IRA despite their income and situation. Lastly, there’s also a SEP IRA for small business entrepreneurs. A solo 401(k) is another popular account type for self-employed individuals who don’t have any employees.
Last but not least, Chris, a lot of people aren’t familiar with the fact that they can self-direct a Health Savings Account, an HSA plan. If you have a high deductible healthcare plan, you have an HSA, you put money in, you get a deduction, and it grows tax-free. As long as you use it for healthcare-related expenses, you don’t pay any taxes. You could self-direct that HSA.
As long as you use it for healthcare-related expenses, you don’t’ pay any taxes in your HSA. This can be used in self-directed IRAs. Click To TweetI’ve had clients do real estate options in their HSAs. I have a client that partners his HSA with his other IRAs to make private money loans to investors. On one loan, his HSA had 5% on a $400,000 private money. His HSA got 5% of the 11% yield, and that all accumulated in his HSA tax-free. Lastly, the Coverdell Education Savings Account is for folks that are trying to save tax-free for their children or grandchildren.
That rounds out all the different types of self-directed tax-advantaged investment accounts. You can utilize all these accounts to invest in real estate, partnerships, private equity, venture capital, hedge-fund-type arrangements, and investments. All of those types of investment opportunities would apply here and then lastly, and I’ll hand it back over to you, Chris, is think about what I call the orbit effect.
We have clients here at Equity Trust who don’t utilize one self-directed account. They have multiple self-directed IRAs for themselves and their family members. I have one client alone. He has ten IRAs and investment accounts for himself and his family members. He has a solo 401(k), a Roth, and a traditional, and accounts for his spouse and for his adult children. He partners all of these accounts together to make private money loans to real estate investors. On one individual loan, he made a loan to a mobile home park operator, and it was an equity participation loan, so not only interest but a percentage of the profits. This is called an equity participation loan.
Ultimately, for readers out there, it’s a note secured by property, and he partnered with all ten of his family member’s accounts. Each of them had their own individual ownership interest based on the proportionate capital contribution. When interest and principal flowed back in, those interest and principal payments flowed back in proportionate to those initial contributions. I’m getting a little bit deep here in terms of technical strategies around investing with these self-directed IRAs but the point is that there’s a lot of creative capability here in terms of being able to invest in real estate and other alternative assets.
What’s the best way if they want to contact Equity Trust to look at rolling their money over or to see what services you guys offer that way?
Our website is Trustetc.com. You can check us out at Trustetc.com. If you’d be interested, folks can go and download two video trainings that we have. One is called the Diversifying into Alternative Assets with Self-Directed IRAs. Folks can get access to that video module. That will also give them access to the course that we have on Private Money Lending with a Self-Directed IRA. There’ll be two modules in there. One will be broad. Here are all the different types of alternative asset investment strategies, lots of case studies, and information about how to utilize these different self-direct IRAs.
Secondarily, for those that want to drill down into private money lending with a self-directed IRA in multiple IRAs, they’ll have that video module in there as well. You can also check us out on YouTube. Just search Equity Trust Company. We have all types of videos and content on there as well. If you want to be able to consume some additional info beyond this show.
That’s wonderful. That’s very generous. Thank you. John, so the last question I want to ask is about UBIT. I want to make sure that people don’t ever get caught surprised by an attack. There are some situations where people can have attacks on them that they didn’t expect. Where does that apply exactly?
There are a lot of common misconceptions out there about UBIT. First, what is UBIT? It is Unrelated Business Income Tax or UBIT for short. You’re going to hear some people say UDFI, Unrelated Debt-Financed Income Tax. Let’s break it down. There are two types of UBIT where your IRA would have to pay a special tax called unrelated business income tax. In other words, there are two instances where your IRA can generate or receive unrelated business taxable income, and therefore, you incur UBIT tax.
The first instance is if your IRA is running itself as though it’s a business. An operating business, if you will. For example, let’s say your IRA invests in an LLC, and that LLC is taxed as a pass-through LLC, which most LLCs are. Can LLCs, in some instances, be taxed a corporation? Yes, they can, but generally speaking, there are no taxes at the corporate level. The income passes through the LLC. Let’s say that LLC is operating a coin-driven laundry mat. That, without a doubt, is an ongoing trader business and unrelated business income tax would be incurred by an IRA that is a partner in that LLC. If my IRA started buying cars and selling them, my IRA would incur unrelated business income tax. Where does my IRA not incur unrelated business income tax?
All the examples that I’ve mentioned, the example I mentioned where I bought a property, a rental property, rented it out for a couple of years, put in $15,000 in repairs, and sold it. We had long-term gains. That’s all tax-exempt. I didn’t mention it before, but my IRAs in that example bought the property as a cash buyer. I didn’t have any debt financing on the property. In the example I used in private money lending, when I make a private money loan, interest income flows back to my self-directed IRA. I don’t have to worry about unrelated business income tax because, under Section 512 of the Internal Revenue Code, it clearly states that interest rates are exempt from it, so I don’t have to worry about UBIT.
We can transact with our IRAs in ways that don’t incur UBIT. Secondarily, the next unrelated business income tax component is if our IRA is engaged in a debt-financed real estate acquisition. When I mentioned UDFI, Unrelated Debt Finance Income tax, that’s what we’re talking about. UDFI is UBIT in the context of a debt finance piece of property that our IRA is either a partner in or our IRA owns outright.
Let’s say I bought a property for $100,000 and borrowed $50,000. You have to borrow on what’s called a non-recourse loan. You can’t go and get a conventional mortgage. Why? Under the provisions of 4975 in the tax code, you personally as an account holder are a disqualified person, and you can’t sign a personal guarantee.
You have to go to a specialty lender, number one. Let’s say you do this. You buy a property for $100,000, you borrow $50,000, and you’re at 50% indebtedness. In other words, 50% of the property is leveraged. What’s going to happen is 50% of all of your net profit, meaning after all of your expenses at 50%, that’s the percent that’s debt-financed and 50% of your depreciation.
You can depreciate in this case because you have a tax liability. You take 50% of your net profit and that’s going to be subject to this unrelated business income tax, or in other words, unrelated debt-finance income tax. You also have to be careful Chris, if your IRA is a limited partner. You hear a lot of people investing in real estate syndication.
Generally, real estate syndications or real estate partnerships are formed as LLCs and taxed as pass-through LLCs. Your IRA becomes a limited partner. You do a subscription agreement. You get a PPM, you fill out a subscription agreement, and your IRA becomes a limited partner in that entity, the pass-through income. In most cases, if it’s commercial real estate, or apartment buildings, it’s going to have leverage. I have never yet seen an apartment building syndication where there’s no debt on the property. In this case, the income’s going to flow through and your IRA would still be subject to unrelated business income tax.
You might have enough bonus depreciation or just depreciation in general. All of the expense write-offs pass through as well via the K-1, so you might not have any UBIT exposure. You have to understand that there could come a day that you would. All that being said, Chris, let me make sure that everybody understands that UBIT is not bad.
Everybody in the industry has looked at UBIT equals bad because we think our IRAs are tax-exempt accounts. Why in the world would I pay this tax? Sometimes to get the returns that we desire, we might have to pay a little bit of tax because we’re involved in a debt-leverage real estate transaction. There can be a lot of benefits to leveraging up and buying properties with debt financing, and non-recourse debt financing with our IRA.
We might pay this UBIT tax, but in the long run, what are those numbers going to look like? I can’t tell you whether it’s a good deal or not. You have to pencil that out. I did want to be very clear that UBIT is not always necessarily a bad thing. If you want to avoid an extra tax return or paying a CPA to do an extra tax return for you, which by the way, it’s called a 990-T, then in that case, you might be better off doing like a rental property where you don’t have debt or some private money lending where you have interest income, so transactions that don’t incur unrelated business income tax.
That’s why often we’ll tell our clients, “If you’re going to buy property, especially if you’re going to use debt or get a mortgage on it, buy it with cash. Put the down payment in cash, and use the IRA money for other things. You can do it with lending and other things where you don’t normally have tax advantages anyways. You might be paying income tax regardless, then you’re going to defer that tax down the road anyways.”
I’m so glad you said that Chris and I are with you 100% on that philosophy. My philosophy as an investor and what I tell folks is, “There are transactions that are good for your IRA and some transactions aren’t good for your IRA. There are transactions that, in some cases make more sense for you to invest with your non-IRA money. It’s not one versus the other. It’s not a contest. It’s a rising tide.”
Every year we want to be doing investments outside of our IRAs to keep our money working for us and growing, and then we want to be doing investments inside of our IRA to keep our money working for us. For our clients that are investing in this alternative asset space, their goal is to preserve their capital and avoid the catastrophe that could occur in the traditional financial markets as we’ve seen in 2022.
As I said before, I always add the disclaimer that the self-directed IRA in itself doesn’t mean your portfolio goes like this. There are no guarantees. You have to work at this. That’s why I always inform people that you have to take control and I understand, Chris, that your group is very much about taking financial control. You have to take control, examine, look for opportunities, investments, and networks, and go to conferences and seminars. That’s how we as investors find these types of opportunities for our self-directed retirement plans as well as outside of our self-directed retirement plans.
John, thank you so much. This has been a valuable and very good education that I know that someone will probably be reading a couple of times over. This is probably not a one-time read unless they’ve already been introduced to you guys previously. I appreciate your generosity in sharing with us.
I appreciate it as well. I’m always happy to come back if needed and answer more questions for your audience. As you can tell, I’m passionate about this topic. We’re very passionate about it at Equity Trust Company and like we tell everyone, take a look at it to determine if it’s right for you or not. For some people, it’s not right for them or they don’t have a lot of passion behind it. That’s okay. I’d encourage folks to take a look at it and see if it’s something that would work for them. We’re here to help you, Chris, and all of your audience members.
Thank you so much. Everybody else, visit the Equity Trust website as well as get the free education that John’s so generously offered. Go and check that out especially if you’re looking to figure out what to do with your IRA or old 401(k) money. This could be a great option for you, a great way to be able to have a custodian to hold that money and then allow you to take personal control.
You can never have true freedom without responsibility. Ultimately, it’s a responsibility that you have over your own life, and taking that control is what allows you to have freedom. When you turn your control over to somebody else, you’ll lose that freedom. If you want to get out of prison, get your money unlocked out of prison, and start doing something better, check that out. Make it a wonderful prosperous week. We’ll see you later.
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About John Bowens
John Bowens is one of the most sought-after and respected educators in the self-directed IRA industry. As Director, Head of Education and Investor Success at Equity Trust Company, John draws from his 20 years in the real estate industry and his experience as an active real estate investor.
In his travels across the U.S. and virtually, he has trained 60,000 investors during more than 400 workshops and classes, spreading the message about the power of building tax-free wealth and leaving a lasting legacy by investing in what investors know best. In addition to thought leadership in the industry, John has also directed teams in both the front-office and back-office operations with Equity Trust, focusing on the custody of various alternative assets, including but not limited to, real estate, notes, private equity, precious metals, and much more.