I am wondering what others are thinking about IRA money--whether to take a penalty hit, and cash out, i.e., slowly start withdrawing the cash so that by the end of the year all the money is removed from the bank? Or leave it alone?????

I do not want to lose my money. Any one out there with advice? Please respond. Thank you.

-- Rita Lowitt (rdlowitt@pacific.net), March 09, 1999

Answers

I am not in favor of everyone taking their money out of the banks, this seems a good way to cause an economic disaster, and along with the cost of fixing the Y2k problems, this seems a sure way to make Y2k a real disaster, ruining our quality of life. Do you want to contribute to that?

And what good will money be in a real economic collapse? Nothing. Silver and Gold will be ok for a while, then even that will be worth nothing. Only our wits and ability to be flexible will help us survive a major collapse, it will be so terrible, so much violence, so much theivery, so much armed robbery. Even hoarding food won't help when starving people come to take it from you.

And there are lots of people out there now just waiting to take your money when you withdraw it from the bank, using y2k as a con.

-- Raven Joy (ravingjoy@stones.com), March 09, 1999.

Money in IRA's - To withdraw or not?

First consideration: Do you have control over the investments in your IRA? Some custodians allow a greater range of investments than others. Certain mutual funds allow investments only within their family of funds. Some banks are very restrictive in what they allow you to do with your funds. Charles Schwab has a good IRA program that allows you great flexibility. One ounce American Gold eagles are a legal investment for IRA's, if the custodian allows them. Alternatively, there is one closed end mutual fund - Central Fund of Canada - that invests directly in gold and silver, the physical metals. The symbol is CEF and it is traded on the American Stock Exchange. You can put this stock in an IRA held by Schwab (but I don't know about American Gold Eagles).

Second consideration: You have to decide for yourself how much you are willing to trust the system not to lose, or lose track of, your investments. If you are extremely concerned and would worry too much about it, then maybe you are better off cashing in the IRA and taking whatever penalty you would suffer by early withdrawal of funds.

It is not an easy choice.

Ed

-- Ed Cooper (ed@edcooper.com), March 09, 1999.

I agree that taking your money out of the bank in December is probably going to contribute to the problems, doing so now will actually help the system adjust to the extraordinary circumstances. That goes for stockpiling food, too. The bestt thing is probably to gradually increase your ready supply of cash over the next few months.

As far as getting ripped off, be careful.

Johnny

-- Johnny Selhorst (johns@sonic.net), March 09, 1999.

My husband and I are moving most of our IRA money into an FDIC insured money market fund in the Calvert group, which will protect it unless the FDIC collapses. We're putting some into the Central Fund of Canada (mentioned above by Ed?), which seems a good bet to me since both gold and silver are near their long term lows right now.

-- Terry Mendenhall (musickhall@aol.com), March 10, 1999.