If you are looking to take some risk with your retirement account, consider whether or not to invest in gold. It is a higher risk move compared to staying firmly planted in small cap mutual funds. When people think about gold, they tend to think gold bullion. That is not what you are buying when you buy into a gold or precious metals fund. Gold coins or gold bullion coins are not bought and stored in a vault under your name. The fund manager will buy a percentage of a precious metals fund for you. The fund may be comprised of gold, silver and platinum, or some combination of two out of three. What you need to know if that there is not a stack of American Eagle gold coins sitting in a vault somewhere.

When you are considering whether to trade gold or other metals,you need to think about risk. Any sort of commodity investing is risky. So you need to ask yourself if you can tolerate that level of risk. Do you have other investments? If you only have your 401k and that is your only retirement investing, you should shy away from gold. 401k rollover accounts, money from former jobs, on the other hand, might be just the place to play around and take some risk. If you have done a 401k rollover to IRA, that might be just the account to use for riskier investments. Since it is not your primary source for retirement money and you have some diversity of funds for retirement, you are in a position to invest a small part of your IRA to gold.

It is important to make smart choices with your investments. Even if you are in your 20s or early 30s, the decisions you make today about your investments will echo for years to come. Don’t invest in gold if you are just following advice from a late night television commercial. Invest in companies and products you understand. That is what smart investors do.

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