Can I Buy Stocks In My IRA

I am guessing by the questions my readers keep asking that there is still some confusion as they keep asking "can I buy stocks in my IRA". I know that it's easy to get confused about account types and what they can do. An IRA is an account type like an individual account, a joint account, a corporate account, etc. An IRA is just a special type of account that the government created that has special tax benefits. Those benefits are that the contributions are tax deductible and the growth inside of an IRA is tax deferred making it ideal for long term investments such as stocks.

The great thing about IRA's too is that you can buy stocks, mutual funds and other types of stock market investing and it works just like a regular stock account. You place orders the same, you get statements the same way and you basically operate the account the same as any other. It's the tax treatment of the account that matters. For that reason, you want to make sure that you don't mix different type of accounts money for fear of complicating your tax return.

Keep in mind too that withdraws from an IRA are subject to a 10% early withdraw penalty by the IRS if you take it out before age 59 1/2. Therefore, you don't want to put money in an IRA that you might need before then.

Can you buy stocks in your IRA? You most definitely can and should do that.