With the average person working well over 40 to 50 years in their life, they set aside a small amount of funds for their retirement. To ensure a better retirement, many individuals place their savings into retirement funds, allowing them to gain profit on the savings they make and thus enjoy a better retirement.

A self-directed Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA) is one of the many arrangements people make for their retirement. It allows them to have greater control over their retirement fund, allowing them to shape their retirement as they will. Here is a closer look at self-directed IRAs and why they may be your key to a better, safer and comfortable retirement:

Benefits

Gain Greater Control over Your Future

As the name suggests, possibly the biggest benefit of self-directed IRAs is the account owner can direct their funds into any securities they want. As a result, they gain greater control over their risk, returns and, evidently, their future. This helps them choose securities and investments they know about, thus providing a host of benefits, such as greater return and control.

They Offer Greater Returns on Savings

Unlike regular retirement funds, where the account manager has control over the investments, self-directed IRAs give the owner greater control of them. As a result, they can expand or shrink their account’s investment portfolio. By doing so – directing greater investment in certain securities – account owners can acquire greater returns on their savings.

They Diversify Your Investments

With the ability to direct your retirement fund into a specific or broad range of securities, self-directed IRA owners can diversify their investments and thus hedge their risks against poor performing securities or market problems. As a result, their retirement fund continues to grow, even if a security underperforms.

Limitations

It’s as Risky as It Is Beneficial

While they may provide greater profitability, self-directed IRAs still follow a major underlying financial principle: the greater the risk, the greater the return. As such, while it does give the account owner the ability to earn greater returns on their savings, it also opens him up to greater risk and thus greater loss.

Your Investments Doesn’t Allow Ownership

While they may be highly beneficial, they do not allow you to own a company, home or certain other securities. For example, if an owner directs a significant portion of their funds into a small company, they cannot own it through the IRA.

It’s Not for Everyone

In truth, a self-directed IRA is not for everyone. If you do not have the expertise to choose securities, it is better you stay away. Moreover, certain prohibited transactions are prohibited by the IRS – make sure you do not plan to invest in them before acquiring a self-directed IRA.

They allow you to hedge your risk, improve your returns and/or allow you to better shape your retirement. As such, self-directed IRAs can be one of the best choices you make for your retirement, provided you know what you are directing your investments into.

Market Place

MKTPlace is a leading digital and social media platform for traders and investors. MKTPlace offers premiere resources for trading and investing education, digital resources for personal finance, news about IoT, AI, Blockchain, Business, market analysis and education resources and guides.

Businesses that offer financial services to its customers have long been trying to dominate the social media channel. With a gargantuan-sized audience, finance companies are trying to connect with their customers more than ever and on a more personal level. However, without the help and/or approval of the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), they will not get far.

But with all the efforts FINRA has publicized, could they be the answer to simplifying social media marketing for finance companies, or complicate them? This article takes a look at FINRA’s efforts in the field for well over a decade and a half, and how it is translating for finance companies.

FINRA Can’t Regulate Loose Rules

While FINRA has provided a substantial amount of regulations and rules to companies offering financial services, the problem is many of these rules can be bypassed relatively easily. For example, when a social media ad is posted, aimed at promoting a service, finance companies are required to state a warning for it. However, this warning can be written or integrated in a picture, often small. As such, regulating loose rules can be rather difficult.

As such, while FINRA can help finance companies market their services better, they will need to overcome regulatory problems in order to do so, and that may not happen within the next 5 years.

Creativity and Personalization May Not Be Possible

For social media to thrive, a company needs to personalize its posts in order to both cater to its customers’ needs and preferences, and stand out from its competition. However, finance companies are rather limited on the posts they or their agents can make, often relying on pre-approved messages. This not only inhibits creativity but limits the messages they can send. By putting proper guidelines into place, FINRA will be able to enable more personalized messages to be created, allowing finance companies to be creative with their messages.

Measuring Your ROI – Still As Complex As Ever

For numerous departments, such as marketing and especially human resources, measuring ROI is not as simple as it may seem. When it comes to social media, measuring your ROI becomes a rather difficult task. Identifying the base factor, likes, comments, shares, and direct messages leading to purchases, can be simple but using them to identify ROI is difficult. With many finance companies worrying about current regulatory and compliance issues, real challenges may be overshadowed by a mediocre one. However, if FINRA does well in putting transparent rules in place quickly, it may shed light on ROI methods.

FINRA has been working tirelessly to help finance companies market their services better on social media channels. Unfortunately, their momentum is rather low and it seems they may not make much headway soon. However, once they do, FINRA could help improve the future of social media marketing for finance companies. Until then, it seems FINRA will not be able to do much for these companies.

Market Place

MKTPlace is a leading digital and social media platform for traders and investors. MKTPlace offers premiere resources for trading and investing education, digital resources for personal finance, news about IoT, AI, Blockchain, Business, market analysis and education resources and guides.