Gold IRA storage fees quandary - anyone else deal with this?

• •I've been wrestling with these storage fees for my Gold IRA lately, and it's starting to feel like a real drain.
• •Got a substantial precious metals portfolio – probably around $3M of it dedicated to the IRA alone, mostly allocated gold and some silver too.
• •My custodian keeps bumping up their annual percentage, and it just feels like death by a thousand cuts when you're looking at a seven-figure account.

I've been wrestling with these storage fees for my Gold IRA lately, and it's starting to feel like a real drain. Got a substantial precious metals portfolio – probably around $3M of it dedicated to the IRA alone, mostly allocated gold and some silver too. My custodian keeps bumping up their annual percentage, and it just feels like death by a thousand cuts when you're looking at a seven-figure account.

When I initially set this up a few years back, the fees seemed reasonable, but the percentage-based model is kinda biting me now that the value has appreciated so much. I understand it's for insured, secure storage, and I'm not looking to cheap out on safety, especially with the amount of capital involved. But man, the idea of paying hundreds of thousands over a decade just to hold my gold feels a bit ridiculous. I'm based out of Scottsdale, AZ, and have been an entrepreneur my whole life, so I'm always looking for efficiency and value. This just feels like an unnecessary drag on my returns.

Has anyone here successfully negotiated these fees down with their custodian or switched to a provider with a more favorable structure for larger accounts? I'm talking about a flat fee, or at least a tiered percentage that caps out. I've looked into different options like home storage IRAs, but with my current portfolio size, I'm not comfortable with the risks and additional hoops you have to jump through for compliance. My preference is still fully segregated, audited storage.

Any insights or recommendations from folks with similar-sized portfolios? Or am I just being overly sensitive to what's a standard cost of doing business in this space? Would love to hear some other perspectives on this.