Investments That Should (And Shouldn’t) Go Into Your IRA

An Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is a tax-advantaged home for your retirement investments.

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An Individual Retirement Account (IRA) is a tax-advantaged home for your retirement investments. Spared annual interruptions by the IRS to collect taxes on your earnings, your nest egg can grow faster than in a taxable brokerage account. Another potential benefit is that when you start drawing from your IRA years down the road, your tax bracket may be lower than when you were stocking your money away.

However, not everything belongs in an IRA.

The types of investments that work best offer periodic cash flows, whether it is in the form of interest payments, dividends or even capital gains, realized or unrealized. It all points to why investors open an IRA in the first place: to build wealth for retirement, not to speculate.

Read on to learn more about a few investments that belong in an IRA, and a couple that don’t.

Michael Kahn
Contributing Writer, Kiplinger.com
Michael Kahn, CMT (Chartered Market Technician) has been writing about the markets since 1986. He is the author of three books on technical analysis published in five languages. His specialty: jargon-free analysis accessible to everyone. He has contributed to many leading financial media including Barron's Online, MarketWatch and Nightly Business Report and was the Chief Technical Analyst for BridgeNews.