Rolled my old 401k into a Gold IRA - feeling pretty good about it!

• •I owned a small print shop here in Denver for the last 15 years, and honestly, retirement planning always felt like a distant future thing.
• •It was sitting at around $70k, maybe a little more, and I just couldn't shake the feeling it was too exposed.
• •I started looking into Gold IRAs a few months back, mostly because a buddy of mine was raving about it.

Okay, so after watching the market do its thing for… well, forever it feels like, I finally pulled the trigger on something I’ve been researching for a while. I owned a small print shop here in Denver for the last 15 years, and honestly, retirement planning always felt like a distant future thing. My old 401k from a previous job had just been sitting there, untouched, getting hammered by inflation and making me generally nervous with all the volatility lately. It was sitting at around $70k, maybe a little more, and I just couldn't shake the feeling it was too exposed.

I started looking into Gold IRAs a few months back, mostly because a buddy of mine was raving about it. I’m not gonna lie, the whole process felt a bit overwhelming at first. All the different companies, the storage options, the types of gold… it was a lot to take in. I had a few calls with different places, asked a ton of questions, and finally settled on one that seemed transparent and had pretty decent reviews. The actual rollover wasn't nearly as complicated as I’d imagined. Once I initiated it, it took about three weeks from start to finish to get the funds moved over and the physical gold purchased and sitting in storage. It was a pretty painless process, honestly.

I ended up allocating about 70% of that old 401k into physical gold, mostly American Gold Eagles and some Canadian Gold Maple Leafs. Felt good knowing I own actual physical assets instead of just paper. The remaining 30% I kept in some more traditional investments, just for a bit more balance. It feels great to have diversified away from just the stock market, especially heading into what feels like increasingly uncertain times. I'm not expecting to get rich overnight, but the peace of mind knowing I have some tangible assets in my retirement portfolio is huge.

Anyone else here recently make a similar move? What were your biggest takeaways or challenges? Always interested to hear other people’s experiences with Gold IRAs, especially from fellow small business owners who might have different perspectives on market stability.