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Edwin Kelly specializes in helping clients self-direct their retirement, education, health savings, and 401(k) accounts into alternative assets. He is a Founder and currently serves as CEO of Specialized Trust Company.Listen in as we talk about self-directed IRAs and how to use your retirement funds for real estate investing!

More about him – https://specializedtrustcompany.com/

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Show Transcription:

Tony (00:01):

Hey guys, Tony Javier, here we are going live on Facebook. We are with Edwin Kelly with Specialized Trust Company. And we’re going to talk about self-directed IRAs and how to use your retirement funds for real estate investing. So thanks for jumping on Edwin. We’re kind of just doing this on the fly. I know I have a lot of questions for you and I’ve had a lot of people bring questions to me on how to use the retirement funds to invest in real estate. So we’re just going to jump right into it. So thanks Edwin for jumping on with me.

Edwin (01:14):

Yeah. Awesome. Awesome to be here with you, Tony.

Tony (01:17):

Great. So let’s just jump into some questions. I know I’ve had a lot of people ask questions on how they could use their IRAs to invest in real estate. So a lot of people have 401k, some people have Roth IRAs or so many different forms of retirement accounts. So I guess start with the easiest retirement accounts to use, to invest in real estate. And then also the ones that maybe people don’t know are options to take their current retirement and invest in real estate. So I was talking with Amanda in your office and she mentioned there are some, some 401ks or maybe all 401ks that you can transition or utilize so that people can take that and invest in real estate. So I’ll kind of let you take that over and kind of advise us on how that works.

Edwin (02:07):

Yeah. So, so let me start off by saying I categorize retirement accounts into two categories. Okay. I have what I call plain vanilla and I have what we call a truly self-directed, right. So what is a plain vanilla retirement account? And I’m going to use some terms generally, and if I’m going to be more specific, I’ll let you know that. But, when I say plain vanilla retirement accounts, you could put 401ks in this category, you can put IRAs in this category, right? You can put all those different accounts in this category. Plain vanilla is what most people have. And a plain vanilla account is one at a traditional bank or brokerage financial institution. And people are limited or restricted to what we refer to as marketable securities, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and CDs, right? That’s basically what they’re limited to that’s what 99.7% of all Americans who have retirement accounts have, okay? By contrast, there’s what I call truly self-directed retirement accounts and a truly self-directed retirement account is one that allows you the retirement account owner to get complete control over the money in your account and invest it in anything allowed by the government.

Edwin (03:28):

So things like real estate notes, mortgages, cryptocurrencies, right? I mean, physical, precious metals, the list is, is pretty much endless. In fact, what I tell people is that if you could do it outside the IRA, chances are, you can do it inside the IRA, as long as we’re doing it, according to the rules. So, that’s kind of a contrast between those two. So if someone has a company sponsored 401k, that’s going to be plain vanilla. If you have an IRA sitting at the bank or brokerage right now that’s plain vanilla. That’s where you’re going to be restricted to basically mutual funds.

Tony (04:03):

Okay. So you have plain vanilla. You have, you have self-directed. So you said cryptocurrency, that kind of surprises me a little bit. I’m guessing that’s going to perk some people’s ears up. So, you know, with real estate. So first of all, a lot of people like doing self-directed because they can invest in real estate and they can control how it’s being invested a little bit more because obviously, I mean, the stock market’s done really well lately. But that, you know, who knows how long that’s going to last, whereas real estate you know, for me and my investors, that I know real estate investors, we can get our investors, a continuous double digit returns, typically with real estate. It’s not, you know, you know, zero one year, 20%, the next year it’s very consistent and very good returns. So for someone that wants to invest in real estate, what are the restrictions on any self-directed IRA on what they can invest in, from what I understand, you can’t invest in your own properties, you have to invest in other people’s properties. Is that correct?

Edwin (05:03):

Yeah. So, that’s a good question. So let me, if you don’t mind, I’m gonna take a step back and just go over the process because it is one of the key because where you’re kind of going through is, well, what can you do and how do you do it? Right? And so it’s actually, self-directing is a pretty simple process. At least it’s simple in my world, the way that I like to think of it and explain it. So self directing is a three step process. So the first step is you decide that you want to get control over your money, that you want to have control over your life and your future. The moment that you decide that you set up a self-directed retirement account, now that can be done online, and it takes all of 10 to 15 minutes to do that.

Edwin (05:38):

The second step is that you deposit money into that self-directed account that you now have established that can be done by transferring IRA money from another bank or brokerage. It could be done from moving money from an old 401k or the TSP right over by the way, without that movement of money is done correctly, there’s no taxes or penalties. So if you have a hundred thousand dollars as an example, sitting someplace, now a hundred thousand dollars shows up in your self-directed retirement account. Okay? So it comes over a dollar for a dollar. And then the third step, which is not what we’re at, which is where your question comes in is to have an account set up. You’ve got money in the council work with now, you’re going to direct those funds and as investors or self-directed investors, like I said, we can do virtually anything that we can imagine anything allowed by the government so long as we do it, according to the rules.

Edwin (06:32):

So the big no-no when it comes to self-directing is what’s called self dealing. So we can self-direct, we can not self deal. So self-dealing, if I want, if I just want to make it simple is you basically summarize it for us, Tony, it’s if you own an asset, now you get a piece of real estate or anything else. You can’t buy that in your retirement account. So, as an example, and this is a common question that comes up, so I know you like to do buy and hold. That’s one of the things you like to do, right? You’re you’re into various aspects of real estate investing, but buy and hold is an example, if somebody has five buy and hold properties in fact, I had a, I had a client call me and said, Hey, I’m looking at setting up an account and moving my money into it.

Edwin (07:16):

My question is this. I have five properties I own right now, and I want to put them in my IRA. Can I do that? And so, again, I just asked the question, well, what is it you want to accomplish ? Well, I like buying whole properties and they provide consistent predictable income. And so that’s what I would rather have my retirement amount of my retirement account money, invested in it as opposed to mutual funds that I have zero control over. So my answer is, yes, you can buy and hold properties inside yourself directly, right? You cannot buy the five that you own already cause you own those, right? So you can’t buy what you already have. That’s a personal asset. Can’t go into a retirement account, but you can acquire or purchase new buy and hold properties that you don’t own. So the IRA could take title to those properties as an example, new ones that, you know, you’re buying from someone that is not yourself, or the other way, you kind of asked the question, Tony was investing in someone else’s deal.

Edwin (08:21):

Yeah. So that’s or investment, right. That’s very, very clean. So as an example, you and I aren’t related in any way, right? So if you said, Hey, Edwin, I’m doing this real estate transaction and I’m looking for funding for it. Would you like to participate? I can very easily get my money to you on that transaction, that’s not going to be a self-dealing transaction either. Right. So, so again, just a couple of different ways you can do that. So you can acquire new properties that you don’t own already, or you can work with another investor.

Tony (08:47):

Okay. So when you self or I guess you called it self dealing. So when you buy your own properties for rentals, can you get loans for those properties with a traditional bank?

Edwin (09:00):

Good question. So there’s a couple of rules around borrowing inside of a retirement account. Okay. So that’s, so by the way, there’s three different investment structures that I teach clients to do when it comes to self-directing their retirement accounts. So one of those investment structures that you’re asking about right now is called leverage. So this is like an insider secret that most people don’t know that you can do, but just like you can put some money down and borrow money to buy real estate outside of your retirement account. Guess what? You can do the same thing inside your retirement account. So how does that work? The main thing you want to know about borrowing inside the retirement account is that you have to have, what’s called a non recourse loan, a non-recourse loan. And basically what that non-recourse loan says, what that note says in the document is that in the event of default, the lender agrees to take back the property for satisfaction of the debt.

Edwin (10:00):

There is no additional recourse to the IRA or the IRA owner. Okay. Now we do that to stay in compliance with some rules. Okay. That, that governs that. And so that’s why we need a non-recourse loan. So that’s why as long as you do it, non-recourse then you can, you can borrow inside of the retirement account. So where do you, so now that the second part of your question is can you go to a traditional bank to get that loan? Generally, no. You need, there are banks that offer non-recourse loans. Okay. But they’re typically portfolio lenders, meaning that they are holding the note or the asset inside. Right. They’re holding it themselves and are not going to go resell it in the market. So if you’re dealing with portfolio lender banks, typically that offer those types of loans financial or finance companies offer non-recourse loans and, or you can get them from private investors.

Tony (10:59):

Yeah. So for those you don’t understand, or maybe heard a different term heard of it as a different term. So the personal guarantee is what a lot of people know. So it basically means that a non-recourse loan means you don’t have a personal guarantee. They can’t go after you personally, if you default. And then you know, private lenders do offer non-recourse loans. In fact, when private lenders do do loans, typically they don’t ask for personal guarantees. And on top of that, there are actually a lot of loan companies that will do long-term loans without personal guarantees. Now it’s something that, you know, within the last few years has become way more popular. So if you go to a local bank, they’re going to ask for a personal guarantee. So the banks or lenders you’re going to have to go to are probably national lenders, like Lima One, or, you know, lending home.

Tony (11:51):

There’s some big ones out there that do non-recourse loans. So good stuff there. So tell me about the limits to put money in. So let’s say I don’t have like, all my money’s in real estate. Right. So I don’t have a 401k. If I were to do it right now, myself, would I set up a 401k and then do a self-directed with it? Or do I do just a self-directed and then how much money can be put in those accounts in any given year and what are the tax deductions on that?

Edwin (12:22):

Okay. Okay. So a few things are there to unpack. So the first question, cause I want to I’ll clarify something here and that is, and this, this is a common question that comes up. Well, can I self-direct this account or do I have to have this type of an account to self-direct? So what makes a self-directed retirement account, a self-directed retirement account? And the answer is we do. And here’s specifically what I mean by that, what the IRS says is that a financial institution offering retirement account services has the right to restrict investments that they’re willing to hold. So in other words, you know, the big bank that you deal with at the end of your street, that you have your checking account with, probably they have, they offer retirement accounts, right? They offer IRAs, but they also have the right to restrict investments, which is why they typically restrict you to stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and CDs, right.

Edwin (13:18):

They have the right to do that. So what you need is a self-directed custodian, and that’s what specialized does as an example. So as long as the account is held at specialized or a self-directed custodian, then any account you have, you can self-direct. So if you open up a Roth IRA, you can self-direct the Roth IRA. If you open up a traditional, you can, self-direct the traditional, if you open up a solo K or a Roth 401k, as an example, it goes by many names. If that’s how the specialized or self-directed custodian, you can self-direct that into again, anything allowed by the government like real estate. So, that’s kind of the first part of that question is the firm that holds your retirement account, determines what you’re allowed to invest in and what they’re willing to hold. Okay. The second part of the question that you asked Tony is, well, how much can you contribute to these accounts?

Edwin (14:13):

The way I typically answer that is I answer it with a question and the question is, well, how much do you want to contribute? Because if you tell me how much you want to contribute, I can usually figure out a way and map it out to a, what I call a custom plan design where we look at you as an individual, your family situation, your business, and we, and I’ll literally map out what that plan looks like. So we show you all the accounts that you qualify for, how you can fund them, how the tax deductions work and then you can decide how much you want to put away. Okay. So, so that’s kinda how I like to answer the question, but to go back to it to, to give you some specifics, it was IRAs as an example this year, if you’re over 50, you can contribute up to $7,000.

Edwin (15:05):

You don’t look 50. So for you to be a little less, right. $6,000 if we’re talking about the small business retirement retirement plan side, or the company sponsor plan, however, you’d like to refer to those, like a 401k, you can go up to 50 to 60 plus thousand dollars a year per person or per, per participant. So there’s some variables there and by the way, we can combine those accounts. So that’s just to give you a feel for it. I have some clients who open up an account, they’re just getting started and they start with a thousand dollar deposit and they’re off and running and they might be doing some wholesaling or some creative type of deals. I have other clients who say, Hey, look, I’m at a point where I want to take as much money off the table and protect it from taxes and creditors as I possibly can. And so we have clients who are contributing, you know, well over a hundred thousand dollars a year to various accounts. So, that kind of gives you a feel for the range.

Tony (16:00):

That was going to be my question. Can you – you can’t – it’s not just that you can do one account. You can do all kinds of different IRAs and do multiple and take advantage of the limits on each one of them.

Edwin (16:11):

Yeah. So, all right, so, so yeah. So let me give you an example. First question for you is, are you married or single? Married. Okay. So you’re married. All right. So as an example, if we start with IRAs, right? You qualify something, you have a social security number and earned income this year, which is right. We’re going to assume you do. So you have those two things. So you could make a contribution of $6,000 as an example, right now we’re in February. So $6,000 for yourself that could be to a traditional or Roth. We’ll just keep it general here without getting into specifics, just call it an IRA. But there’s, there’s two types right there. So wherever you want that money to go, we can figure out how to get it there. So, so that’s 6,000 for you now, but you say, if you said, we, when I want to max out my contributions, okay, well then, because you’re married, you could make a spousal set up a, an account for your wife and you could have a spousal contribution whether she has earned income or not.

Edwin (17:06):

If you guys are married, filing joints, you qualify your spouse. So now that’s $12,000 into those accounts. But if you didn’t have them set up for last year, you didn’t contribute for last year. We can still make a cotton user can still make a contribution for last year, times two. So that’s another 12. So right. There’s $24,000. Now we can come over to the other side of the house, right. Company sponsored plans. And let’s assume that you want to set up a solo K, well, again, you can contribute right for yourself. And depending upon the numbers, we can easily go over 20,000 to those accounts. And like I said, upwards of 50, in your case, probably, you know, into the $50,000 range, if you, if your spouse and you guys work in the business together, again, you could double those numbers. So you can see how very quickly we would get over right.

Edwin (17:59):

A hundred thousand dollars within a matter of a month or two. So, we could very quickly get there for you. So that’s why I say, we look at those accounts by category. Cause you qualify in both categories as a business and as an individual. And we look at your family situation. So again, if you wanted to match those exact, by the way, one of the things that people don’t know is that you have multiple accounts, you could actually partner those accounts together into the same investment if you chose to. So you can, even though you have multiple accounts set up in the self-directed world, you could look at it if you want to, as one bucket of money to go invest with.

Tony (18:39):

I like that. I like that. So you, you mentioned so first of all so when you put money in it’s tax deferred, right? So you don’t have to pay taxes on that money you put in and you can save that on your income taxes. And then the other part is you mentioned wholesaling, so you can wholesale properties within a self-directed. And for those of you who are new to wholesaling. Wholesaling is when someone puts a property under contract, they put a deposit down and they typically don’t close on it. Maybe, maybe they do need to, you may tell me they need to, but typically they sell the contract to another investor and they’ll make five, 10, 15, 20 grand, whatever the number is. So tell us how people can use self-directed IRAs for wholesaling.

Edwin (19:22):

Yeah. So, you know, versus like I said, virtually, anything you can do outside of your checking account, you can do inside the retirement account. So where people do wholesaling now, like you mentioned, there, they have a contract, they have the property under contract, and then they go assign the contract, depending upon the strategy. Obviously they can assign that contract to somebody else. Well, what name is that contract in? It’s typically in the name of their business or their LLC, whatever they’re using, correct. Well, you can simply replace the LLC name with the name of your retirement accounts. And now the retirement account has that contract in that particular case, the financial consideration needs to come from the retirement account. So instead of it coming from your LLC and you are writing the check, you would have specialized cut the check, so to speak right to the seller. Now your retirement account owns that contract. When your retirement account assigns that contract to another investor, that other investor is going to write the check for the assignment fee to the owner of the contract, which in this particular case is your retirement account. And now the money goes back in there.

Tony (20:26):

That’s amazing. I’ve never heard that before. That’s awesome. So you don’t actually have to own the property. You just have to have specialized cut the check from your IRA to the title company that holds the deposit. And then when the wholesaler writes the check, they need to write it to your IRA account.

Edwin (20:43):

Correct. And so keep in mind. So this is where you get really, this is where I say, like with self-directed accounts, you have complete control over the money. So as long as it’s legal, according to the government, we can do it. So the thing is, the retirement account can own almost any asset or investment. So as an example, a contract on an asset is an asset, right? Think about this. People are familiar in some cases, although most people haven’t done them. Options on stocks put in calls. When I came, when I lived in the wall street world, right. Puts in calls, we did those things all the time. So we did options on derivative security, even. So we were doing some pretty sophisticated stuff back then. Well, an option on a stock in my opinion is very similar to an option on a piece of real estate.

Edwin (21:31):

It’s a piece of paper that controls an underlying asset could now be the workflow out of my mind, but contingent, – there we go – contingent in the terms of that contract, right. But that’s an asset, that’s a paper asset and retirement accounts have owned those for years when they’re based on stocks, right. Or derivative securities in some cases like I used to do. And so now in my opinion, it’s a very similar thing. You’re using that same instrument and option contract, but you’re controlling a different type of asset, a piece of real estate versus a stock.

Tony (22:09):

Okay. Good stuff. Good stuff. So gosh, there were so many questions that I had in my head and they totally just totally went through. So you’re really, you’re blowing my mind here with all kinds of different things that real estate investors can do to save money on real estate. Oh, the question that I had was, so let’s say you wholesale a property, you put a thousand dollars deposit down, you make 20 on that. 20 goes into that IRA, and then you want to use that 20 grand to fund your own investments. Can you loan the IRA money that’s in your IRA to yourself to buy and flip properties?

Edwin (22:44):

No. So, so let me give you a couple, a couple thoughts there real fast. And if you want to ask more about this, you can go there. But with IRAs, you are not allowed to borrow personally from your IRA. If you want the ability to borrow money personally, then what you want is a solo K. And we have a lot of clients investors, entrepreneurs who set up a 401k plan. And the reason why that is, is because that is the one account the government does allow us to borrow personally from. So let’s say you set up a 401k, you put some money in there and you start growing it. And you say, you know what? I would like to have access to this money and be able to use some of this money outside my account. The 401k gives you that option. So with the way the 401k loans work is that you’re allowed to borrow up to $50,000 or 50% of your account value.

Edwin (23:43):

Whichever is less so as an, if you have a hundred thousand dollars in your 401k, your maximum is $50,000, right? If you have $50,000 in your 401k, your maximum is $25,000, right? That’s how it works. If you have $200,000 in your 401k, your maximum is still $50,000. So that’s how those two things work together in tandem. Okay. The second thing about the 401k loan is that when you take a personal loan and let’s just assume you’re borrowing the full $50,000, once that money comes out of the plan, it’s no longer a plan asset. It’s a personal asset. So the rules and restrictions on money inside the retirement account don’t apply anymore. So now you have a free reign of that money. Let me, let me tell you something else about it. That’s really cool is that there is interest on that note. But it has to be a market rate of interest set by the administrator.

Edwin (24:35):

So we set it as prime plus two. So whatever prime is, add two points, that’s the interest rate. But the cool thing about it is that Tony, you pay that interest back to your own accounts because that’s where you borrowed it from. So even though there’s an interest rate attached, I call it a zero cost to capital because all you’re doing is moving money from one of your pockets to another pocket. But here’s another beautiful thing about 401k loans and, and we’ve, we’ve helped clients restructured debts and go from negative cash flow to positive cashflow within 30 to 60 days, because what happens is it’s not uncommon that when people are getting into real estate investing, there’s some significant investments they need to make upfront in terms of education and training, right? And so what happens is they typically will use high interest rate credit cards to do that.

Edwin (25:18):

And if it’s taking them a little longer to pay those loans off, we’ve actually had situations where I’ve had clients who are in a negative cashflow situation. We set up a 401k, they structure a 401k loan. They pay off those credit cards. And literally we’ve seen clients go from a negative cashflow every month to a positive because those loan payments are less, they’re fully amortized over five years, it’s a much lower interest rate. And like I said, it’s basically zero to the client. And, and so, so that’s a way that 401ks and self-directed accounts can help you right now today, but I’ll take it one step further. And that is because you mentioned people, you know, companies doing loans and all those kinds of things that we know in real estate, people are borrowing. So credit is important. Here’s the cool thing about it.

Edwin (26:03):

401K loans are not reportable to credit bureaus. So other than you and me and I’m bound by a privacy policy, so I can’t tell anybody right now, nobody knows you have that loan. So if you have credit cards right now, and let’s say you have a hundred thousand dollars in an IRA, we could move that into a 401k, you structure a $50,000 loan. You pay off those credit cards, you’re going to see your credit score bounce, probably a hundred points. We’ve seen that pretty commonly bounce, a hundred points because now your debt utilization right, comes back in line. So there’s all kinds of benefits to that, but, and that’s kind of a little bit longer answer to your question, but the 401k loans are a very, very powerful tool for investors and entrepreneurs. So it’s one that people should know about.

Tony (26:44):

No, that’s, that’s really good. So, so let’s say a real estate investor has $50,000 sitting in their account and they’re not, they’re not really doing anything with it. So in my mind, what you could do is you could take that 50 grand, put it in a 401k and let’s say your tax rates 30%, I’m just throwing that number out there. Just for round numbers, they could say $15,000 in taxes, and then they can take half of that, which is 25 grand and loan it directly back to themselves, put it back in their company and then utilize that money. So really the net effect of that is you’re only, you only have $10,000 less of capital, but then you have the other 25 over there. So really you’re, you’re increasing your total capital overall of 15,000 by doing that. Am I saying that correctly? That you can do that?

Edwin (27:29):

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause you’re taking that to a whole other level too, because that’s another thing that we see when people get into a financial bind or they’re starting a company, we’ve seen people cash out their retirement accounts, right? So they have working capital to start their business. The challenge is your point. You’re paying taxes on that and don’t forget about the 10% penalty if you’re under 59 and a half. So actually they would have less in that scenario, if they take a distribution from their premature distribution, from their retirement account. So by moving the money into a vehicle where they could personally borrow it, they still have cash to invest inside the account and they have working capital outside the account to your point. And they haven’t given the government a dime of their money. Right. They’ve kept a hundred percent of it. So you’re not losing it to the government. The other thing is you’re not losing it to the credit card company anymore by paying those high interest rates.

Tony (28:20):

Okay. So when you, when you cash it out, you’re gonna be doing 10%. So down the road, if you need that money. But again, if you put money in, you can only borrow $50,000 at any given time or half of what is in that account. Correct?

Edwin (28:38):

Correct. But now let me take it one step further for you. So let’s say, because again, this is my client base, right? We have a ton of real estate investors and a lot of my investors are just like you, they’re married, but remember if you hire your spouse in the business, you both are participants out of that plan. You both have a hundred thousand in the plan. You both are eligible to take a $50,000 loan. So now you actually have a hundred thousand. So again, there’s this, this is why I say one of the things that we do because this stuff, it is so specialized, right? Hence the name of the company right. You can tell how clever I am, but but, but the thing is, this episode specialized that, that’s why we actually, one of the things that we do a little differently is that we take the time and we do custom plan designs for clients.

Edwin (29:29):

So we figure out exactly what you want. What’s important to you, what your situation is, like I said. So that we can actually map this out and give you all those options. So when we have one of my self-directed strategists or specialists work with a client, these are the kinds of things that you want to bring up, right? These are the things you want to bring up to somebody because what type of investments do you think you might do? You may not ever do them, but what do you think you might do? What are you interested in doing? You know, what’s important to you? Do you want to have access to the money right now? Do you want to restructure that? Right. All, all these things are important to bring up because a lot of these things can be addressed, believe it or not through self directed strategies.

Tony (30:08):

Yeah. There’s so many questions I could probably go into in so many different directions I could go, but I think this really gives us a good baseline for what you can do. There’s a lot of creativity to it. If you’re investing in real estate, I feel like this is something that you can take, what you’re doing now and really optimize your money. And then on top of that, if you’re not in real estate and you want to get into real estate, maybe putting your 401k or whatever your retirement account is and making it self directed and then finding an investor to invest that money with is a really good vehicle to, because I know the investors that I put together from my mastermind events and things like that, and myself were paying, you know, nine to 12%. And I even have some deals where I’m willing to pay, you know, 20% on deals, just because there’s a lot of margin in there. So so what if you,

Edwin (31:00):

I was going to chime in on that. So this is one of the reasons why, you know, people have been, believe it or not, with the stock market setting records, it’s made people more and more uneasy. So people are looking for diversification options, but, but let me give you a scenario. Because what you just said, I think is really, really important. And I want to emphasize that for folks listening right now, you talked about some percentage rates of returns, right? That you, that in your case, you know, firsthand, that’s what the investment can pay. So let me ask you a question, right? Cause you’re, you’re a pretty true guy. If I told you that I’m aware of an investment that you can make right now this year, okay, it will pay you a hundred dollars this year, right? That’s what it will pay. It will only cost you $100,000 to get into it.

Edwin (31:46):

Would you be interested in that investment? Now you invest a hundred thousand dollars and you get a hundred dollars back. No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. But understand that if someone has money in the stock market right now, that’s exactly what they’re doing. Because Tesla, as an example, hit a PE ratio of 1000 in December. And for people who don’t understand fundamental stock analysis, that’s the world I came from. Basically the scenario I just gave you is what somebody is doing. You are paying a hundred thousand dollars for every hundred dollars in earnings. If you own Tesla, as an example. And by the way, if you own S and P 500 index funds or large cap funds, guess what you own Tesla. So this is, so if you wouldn’t take that deal. So my question is, why do you have money in it now, by contrast, this is what people are waking up to. What you just talked about, the numbers that you’re seeing people are able to earn with you, right? When they’re investing with you, as an example, is way better than a hundred dollars on a hundred thousand dollar investments, right? So it gets self-directing as a great diversification tool, if you’re nervous about things like that.

Tony (32:55):

Yeah. Well, great. Well, Edwin, I really appreciate your time. Like I said, if we could probably talk about this for hours, I’m sure you can, you’ve got a lot of knowledge in it and you’ve been in the game for awhile. Where do people get ahold of you? Because I’m sure some people are listening to this and saying, Hey, we need to check into this. We need to convert 401ks and do certain things. If someone wants to get ahold of you and your company, where’s the best way to go and find?

Edwin (33:18):

So the best thing to do is so right now I’m actually offering up my latest book that I’ve written for free along with a free strategy session with a self-directed specialist. And so, because there’s a lot of people that have questions about this stuff, and it’s very specific as you can tell right to your own situation. So the best way to take advantage of that free offer is to go to specialized trust company.com, specializedtrustcompany.com – the name of the company – and on the very front page we just put out there a form that you can fill out to request the book and the consult that strategy session for free. So you just put your information in there and you get it. The other thing that’s on there is the 800 numbers on there. So if you don’t want to wait for a call back, you can call the 800 number and you’ll go straight into a self-directed specialist and you can set that all up with them directly.

Tony (34:08):

Awesome. Fantastic. Well, thanks again for your time, Edwin. I know I had some questions and I have had a lot of people ask questions about self-directed and how to save money, uh you know, on their taxes as well as take money that’s in their retirement account investment real estate. So I appreciate you answering a lot of those questions and look forward to connecting again soon. Yeah. Thanks Tony. I appreciate it. All right. Talk soon. Thanks.