How To Buy Stocks With Your IRA Money

A common question I get is how to buy stocks with your IRA money. I can tell from a lot of my readers that are still questions about how IRA's work when it comes to stock market investing. Remember, that the first important point is that an IRA is a type of trading account that the government has set up that has preferential tax treatment. The other point is that stocks are a type of investment that you can fund your IRA with. You can fund an IRA with basically any type of investment like a stock, bond, mutual fund, real estate and annuities to name a few.

In order to buy stocks in your IRA, you must open an IRA account with your broker. Remember that an IRA is only different in tax treatment and not in the mechanics of how it works. So, if you are familiar with a standard brokerage account, you know all you need to know to also buy stocks to fund our IRA.

The last point I think that is important is that you don't want to mix IRA money, also known as qualified money, with money that has already been taxed -- non qualified money. Do not commingle these funds together or you will complicate your tax situation.