Should I switch/rollover my IRA to a Gold IRA at Regal Assets?
"The link you originally included had an affiliate code included (now removed). It is likely that your ""friend"" suggested the site to you because there is something in it for your ""friend"" if you sign up with their link. Seek independent financial advice, not from somebody trying to earn a commission off you. Don't trust everything you read online – again, the advice may be biased.  Many of the online ""reviews"" for Regal Assets look like excuses to post affiliate links. A handful of the highly-ranked (by Google Search) ""reviews"" about this company even obscure their links to this company using HTTP redirects. Whenever I see this practice in a ""review"" for a web site, I have to ask if it is to try and appear more independent by hiding the affiliation? Gold and other precious metal commodities can be part of a diversified portfolio, a small part with some value as a hedge, but IMHO it isn't prudent to put all your eggs in that basket. Look up the benefits of diversification.  It isn't hard to find compelling evidence in favor of the practice.  You should also look up the benefits of low-fee passively-managed index funds. A self-directed IRA with a reputable broker can give you access to a wide selection of low-fee funds, not just a single risky asset class." Advantages of Gold IRA (regardless of where you're holding it): Disadvantages of Gold IRA: Instead, you can invest in trust funds like SLV (The ETF for silver) or GLD in your regular brokerage IRA. These funds negotiate their prices of storage, are relatively liquid, and shield you from the dangers of owning physical metal while providing opportunity to invest in it at market prices.
A rollover IRA is a traditional IRA.  Your rollover contributions are not taxed and rollover or counted against your annual limit, which is income dependent. A Roth IRA is one where your contributions will be taxed going into the IRA.  Note that there are adjusted gross income maximums for contribution to a Roth IRA (see here), and as far as I can tell those income maximums also determine whether or not you can rollover to a Roth IRA. You have many options, and there is no one-size-fits-all recommendation. You can contribute to your IRA in addition to your 401(k), but because you have that 401(k), it is not tax-deductable. So there is little advantage in putting money in the IRA compared to saving it in a personal investment account, where you keep full control over it. It does, however, open the option to do a backdoor-rollover from that IRA to a Roth IRA, which is a good idea to have; you will not pay any taxes if you do that conversion, if the money in the IRA was not tax deducted (which it isn't as you have the 401(k)). You can also contribute to a Roth IRA directly, if you are under the income limits for that (193k$ for married, I think, not sure for single). If this is the case, you don't need to take the detour through the IRA with the backdoor-rollover. Main advantage for Roth is that gains are tax free. There are many other answers here that give details on where to save if you have more money to save. In a nutshell, In between is 'pay off all high-interest debt', I think right after 1. - if you have any. 'High-Interest' means anything that costs more interest than you can expect when investing. Right you **don't** ever want to use that account for your traditional 401k rollovers.  Realistically, you could *probably* still have it reclassified as a traditional IRA and roll your traditional 401ks into it, which was basically your original idea except none of the funds would be Roth; but if you see yourself ever potentially contributing to a Roth IRA going forward (which makes all the more sense if you have only traditional 401k funds in your retirement portfolio so far), there's nothing *wrong* with having both types of IRA at the same time.  But no, don't cross the streams!  :) I am very happy with Charles Schwab.  I use both their investing tools and banking tool, but I don't do much investing besides buy more shares a random mutual fund I purchase 4 years ago I did once need to call in about an IRA rollover and I got a person on the phone immediately who answered my questions and followed up as he said he would. It is anecdotal, but I am happy with them. "To answer your question point by point - I'd focus on the last point. The back of my business card -  Let's focus on Single. The standard deduction and exemption add to over $10K. I look at this as ""I can have $250K in my IRA, and my $10K (4%) annual withdrawal will be tax free. It takes another $36,900 to fill the 10 and 15% brackets. $922K saved pretax to have that withdrawn each year, or $1.17M total.  That said, I think that depositing to Roth in any year that one is in the 15% bracket or lower can make sense. I also like the Roth Roulette concept, if only for the fact that I am Google's first search result for that phrase.  Roth Roulette is systematically converting and recharacterizing each year the portion of the converted assets that have fallen or not risen as far in relative terms. A quick example. You own 3 volatile stocks, and convert them to 3 Roth accounts. A year later, they are (a) down 20%, (b) up 10%, (c) up 50%. You recharacterize the first two, but keep the 3rd in the Roth. You have a tax bill on say $10K, but have $15K in that Roth." In your entire question, the only time you mention that this is an investment inside an IRA is when you say Every quarter, six months, whatever Id have to rebalance my IRA while Vanguard would do this for the fund of funds without me needing to. Within an IRA, there are no tax implications to the rebalancing. But if this investment were not inside an IRA, then the rebalancing done by you will have tax implications. In particular, any gains realized when you sell shares in one fund and buy shares in another fund during the rebalancing process are subject to income tax. Similarly, losses also might be realized (and will affect your taxes). However, if you are invested in a fund of funds, there are no capital gains (or capital losses) when re-balancing is done; you have gains or losses only when you sell shares of the fund of funds for a price different than the price you paid for them. If you roll your funds from a 401k to an individual Vanguard account it will be in an IRA. Some people talk about IRA loans, but what is happening is that you are given a check for the value of the IRA and you have 60 days to deposit that full amount in another qualified account before being assessed a distribution penalty. The IRS also has rules to prohibit you from making several back-to-back rollovers to try to float the money for longer than 60 days. There have been studies which show that Dollar Cost Averaging (DCA) underperforms Lump Sum Investing (LSI). Vanguard, in particular, has published one such study. Of course, reading about advice in a study is one thing; acting on that advice can be something else entirely. We rolled over my wife's 401(k) to an IRA back in early 2007 and just did it as a lump sum. You know what happened after that. But our horizon was 25+ years at that time, so we didn't lose too much sleep over it (we haven't sold or gone to cash, either).