5 years in - my Gold IRA journey and some thoughts on returns

• •I just hit the 5-year mark with my Gold IRA, and honestly, it’s been a pretty interesting ride.
• •For context, I’m in Greenwich, CT, manage a fund, and I've always seen gold as a strategic hedge more than a get-rich-quick scheme.
• •My returns have been decent, certainly not equity-level blow-out numbers, but that was never the expectation.

I just hit the 5-year mark with my Gold IRA, and honestly, it’s been a pretty interesting ride. For context, I’m in Greenwich, CT, manage a fund, and I've always seen gold as a strategic hedge more than a get-rich-quick scheme. Initially, I rolled over about $750k from an old 401k into physical gold and some silver, mostly in American Gold Eagles and a good chunk of Canadian Maple Leafs for liquidity. My thought process at the time was to diversify away from what I saw as an increasingly frothy equity market, and frankly, some of the geopolitical winds were looking a bit dodgy even back then.

My returns have been decent, certainly not equity-level blow-out numbers, but that was never the expectation. I’m sitting on close to a 40% gain on the physical gold portion over these five years, which feels pretty comfortable for a non-correlated asset. The silver's been a bit lumpier, as anyone in silver knows, but still net positive. What’s really given me peace of mind, though, is the stability it’s provided when other parts of my portfolio have been volatile. It’s hard to put a price on that psychological comfort, especially when you’re dealing with the daily swings of the market.

One thing I’ve been starting to think about more seriously now that I’m closer to 60 is the RMDs. I spent some time last week playing around with that RMD Calculator (rmdcalculator.goldirablueprint.com) just to get a clearer picture of what those distributions might look like down the line. It’s definitely a different beast than managing traditional equity RMDs, given the physical nature of the asset. Are any of you further along in the RMD process with your Gold IRAs? What strategies have you found most effective for managing those distributions without taking a huge hit on liquidation?

I also diversified into some mining stocks within a separate brokerage account, which has been interesting, but that’s a whole different risk profile. The physical gold in the IRA just... sits there, providing that fundamental ballast. It’s not flashy, but it’s reliable. Anyone else hit a similar milestone with their precious metals IRA? How are you feeling about your allocation strategy now versus five years ago?