This month we’re featuring our client Mike who is an IT Director residing in St Augustine, Florida. While investing is not his main career, he is seasoned in many types of investments ranging from rentals and flips, hard money loans, precious metals (gold), and even bitcoin. With all of these investments under his belt using his IRA, Mike has some great advice to share for both newbies and professional investors.
Mike first began investing with his Solo 401K in 2000 mainly in the stock and bond markets. Many years later he met the NuView IRA team at a Jacksonville Real Estate Investor’s Association (REIA) event where he learned about self-directing his retirement funds. Today, 10+ years later, he owns and profits from 17 rental properties, has done several flips, has seen his bitcoin value skyrocket 400% in just over 2 years, and is still actively involved in hard money lending.
Mike explains that investing in rental property is his favorite form of self-directing his funds because rentals are easy to manage and have a reasonably high return on investment – in his case, at least 12% ROI. Flips are also very profitable but they require more of your time which is difficult to manage with a full-time job.
One of Mike’s most fascinating investment successes has been with Bitcoin in a fairly short period of time. Two and a half year ago, Mike purchased bitcoin at $250 USD per coin and, since then, the value has quadrupled to now over $1,000 per coin (valued at $1135.20 on April 3rd 2017 when this article was published).
Mike says his ideal way of investing is in real estate “because you can have a good hold on what the rate of return will be whereas , with the stocks and bonds market, you have no idea if and when the market will take a turn for the worse”.
After speaking with Mike for quite some time about his different investments ventures throughout the years, he made mention that he is extremely pleased with the service he’s received from NuView as a client. “Even though NuView is a small company, everyone is extremely helpful and you get personalized service.”
Mike’s Advice for Self-Direction Novices:
Using a self-directed IRA is much safer when your custodian can ensure you are not making prohibited investments, which can be an issue that may arise with other retirement planning providers.
We appreciate clients like Mike sharing his story and would love to hear your investment successes. Please email Emily Brand at ebrand@nuviewira.com if you would like to submit your story.
