It’s Time to Learn About the Self-Directed IRA

ANNOUNCER: Welcome to Creating Wealth with Jason Hartman! During this program, Jason is going to tell you some really exciting things that you probably haven’t thought of before, and a new slant on investing: fresh new approaches to America’s best investment that will enable you to create more wealth and happiness than you ever thought possible. Jason is a genuine, self-made multi-millionaire who not only talks the talk, but walks the walk. He’s been a successful investor for 20 years, and currently owns property in 11 states and 17 cities. This program will help you follow in Jason’s footsteps on the road to financial freedom. You really can do it! And now, here’s your host, Jason Hartman, with the complete solution for real estate investors.

JASON HARTMAN: Welcome to the Creating Wealth show. This is your host Jason Hartman, and this is episode number three hundred and fifty-five. We’ll keep this intro real short today; we have our guest, which is Jeff Desich, he is one of the founders of the Equity Trust Company, the largest self-directed IRA company in the country. And one of the interesting things about the crowdfunding game that is getting bigger and bigger—I actually invested, and you know, some of these things I just try them out so that I can report back to you on them, but some I may like, and they turn into something I do a lot of. But I just invested actually in a crowdfunding real estate apartment deal. Fairly small amount of money, fairly small investment, but I’ll report back to you on how that works. I think that, and the fact that the self-directed—these really do have a connection, folks—that the self-directed IRA market is really so small in comparison to overall IRAs, and the crowdfunding market is so small, this really changes something. I think this will really bring a lot of money into the real estate investment market, which will be bullish for rising prices over the coming years. So for example, we talk about equity trust here, right? The self-directed IRA market—and I think we talked about some of this stuff in the actual interview that’s coming up, but just for the point I’m making here—the self-directed IRA market, where people can invest in real estate, or pretty much anything they want, not everything—but, that market represents only 2% of the overall IRA market. And that 2% number is about $60 billion with a B—60 billion. So the other 98% is in traditional stock market oriented IRAs. Well what does that mean to us as investors? Well, as more people learn about the opportunities to have self-directed IRAs, and convert their IRAs, which is obviously wise—to convert it to self-directed—and there are many great companies that do this. We’ve had several on the show; Accuplan, Entrust, but Equity Trust, the one where we’re interviewing one of the founders here, is the largest by far in the country. So, as more and more people learn about the opportunity to self-direct, because they can get control of their retirement plan, and of course this is Commandment #3, right? Thou shalt maintain control; be a direct investor. Control the things in which you invest rather than letting some money manager and mutual fund guy and financial adviser control your financial future. You want to be in control of it yourself, of course. That’s obvious, right? Well, as more money comes into the self-directed market, and people use that to buy up income properties, well—that’s very bullish for prices. It’s gonna put upward pressure on prices of properties. Of course we have inflation, and all the other things we talk about all the time, but this is another aspect, and I think it’s a pretty big aspect really. And then you look at the crowdfunding movement, and that will bring more and more money into the income property market. Because—I mean, one of the best investments to crowdfund is a real estate deal. It’s a lot simpler than a business, being an angel investor, something like that. Businesses are far more complicated, with so many moving parts; it’s just obviously very risky, right? So this is one of the often-overlooked aspects that I just wanted to bring up as we do this interview about self-directed IRAs. So again, I’ve gotta keep this intro really, really short—we’ve got a zillion things to talk about as well as some great upcoming shows: John Stossel will be on the next show. Noam Chomsky, left-wing Noam Chomsky, after that. And probably just to keep with the theme of left-wingers, we’ll probably run Bill Ayers, which was by the way a fantastic interview, if I do say so myself. It was all him, not me, but he let me ask him pretty much anything, and stuck around for quite a while. Whereas Noam Chomsky, I think he kind of chickened out and cut the interview short. So we’ll probably run Bill Ayers on 358, and episode 359, I’m not sure yet, but we’ve got a bunch of great stuff in the can. So, we’ll get that up, and then episode number 360, obviously a 10th show, so we’ll go off and talk about a not directly related topic. And one of the things we’re gonna talk about at our upcoming Meet the Masters event in January by the way, and I hope you’ve got your tickets for that—they’ve been selling at a pretty good clip, but there still are tickets available, so go to www.jasonhartman.com and click on events for that, and get your Meet the Masters tickets. Still early bird pricing; it escalates as we get closer, and ticket sales increase. But one of the things we’re going to talk about, that really was a non-issue at the last one, are these alternative currencies. And how that impacts us as real estate investors. So, Bitcoin, and—Bitcoin is the big 800 pound gorilla in the alternative currency market—but we’re gonna talk about some others as well. So I think you’ll find that to be very interesting, and get the latest thinking on how that impacts us as real estate investors, and what it means for the value of the dollar, what it means for inflation or deflation, as the case may be, and just the whole concept of alternative currencies—I think really pretty darn interesting. And as you know, I’m not bullish on them at all—in China they pretty much outlawed Bitcoin; I don’t know exactly what they did, but I have read a couple articles on it. And of course the value of Bitcoin in China has completely plummeted. So, these alternative currencies, even though Ben Bernanke oddly said that he thought it was a good thing. I don’t know if that was just window dressing, or trying to appeal to all of those who think that the Fed is a scam—I’m one of those by the way—and think that it should be audited and more transparent, etc. etc. etc. So many he was just throwing a bone to those people who don’t like the Fed, and there’s a good reason not to like the Fed, you know. I think what Julian Assange said—he’s the founder of WikiLeaks, obviously, the exiled Julian Assange—what he said during the WikiLeaks movie, which I’m sure that’s out of theaters by now, but make sure you find that and watch it online or on NetFlix or something, because it’s really quite interesting—but what he said was, transparency for the organization, and privacy for the individual. Transparency for the organization or the institution, and privacy for the individual. And that’s the way it should be, I agree. So why should the government really have secrets? I guess there’s probably a legitimate case to be made for national defense and things like that. I suppose all governments have to have some secrets. But that’s just pure technology type stuff. When you get beyond that—why should the way money is created by cloaked in secrecy? Why should pseudo-governmental agencies like the Federal Reserve be so secretive? I think they should be totally transparent. But of course, that’s not the way things are. So many Bernanke was throwing a bone, saying Bitcoin and other alternative currencies were a good thing—I doubt he really meant that. But, these alternative currencies, that’s an interesting angle, and there are a lot of aspects to it, so we’ll talk about that at Meet the Masters. Also, many of you have been buying the Meet the Masters home study courses and creating wealth courses, the physical products. I’m gonna ship another batch of those here really soon, so your orders of those extremely discounted physical products—of course, you can get those at www.jasonhartman.com, in the products section. Those will be shipped here, again, we’re shipping another big batch in the next couple of days. And I guess that’s it for now. So, some great stuff coming up, let’s talk about self-directed IRAs, and we will be back with our guest on that in just about 60 seconds.

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JASON HARTMAN: It’s my pleasure to welcome Jeff Desich to the show! He is the CEO of Equity Trust, and as you may recall, I was speaking at one of their events recently, and we interviewed another key player with their company, and they’ve got a huge self-directed IRA business. They’re a custodian, they’re the biggest in the marketplace, they have about 25% market share, about $13 billion in accounts there, and just looking forward to a great interview with Jeff. Jeff, welcome, how are you?

JEFF DESICH: I’m doing great, thank you so much for having me on today, I’m really excited about this.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, the pleasure is all mine. So, tell us a little bit about just the self-directed IRA market in general, and then we’ll talk about some of the reasons and benefits to self-direct, and then we can kind of go from there.

JEFF DESICH: Sure. Well, when we talk about that self-direct IRA, really what we’re talking about is freedom, and the ability to really invest in what you know and what you feel comfortable with. So, for most people, when they’re using a self-directed IRA, they’re going to invest in real estate, or precious metals, or maybe a private placement. So, the account gives you a lot of freedom, and we’ve seen Americans really as a trend be more open to investing in different types of non-traditional investments outside of the stock market. So the self-directed IRA really gives you a lot of freedom.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. When did this start? Sometime back in the 70s?

JEFF DESICH: It did, it did. In 1974 there was a big law called ERISA that was passed that created 401(k)s and IRAs, and since the beginning, you’ve had the ability to invest your IRA in these types of investments, but most people just didn’t realize, or don’t know today, that you can do this. And that’s why the biggest part of our job at Equity Trust is education and awareness. We’ve got to make sure people understand that they can do this, and open their eyes to the possibilities that are out there.

JASON HARTMAN: Who is really eligible to self-direct their IRA? And maybe Jeff you just want to give an overview along with the answer to that, how many different types of retirement accounts are there? I mean, there are 401(k)s, there are what’s known as a solo(k), like a 401(k) but for a single, solo business owner. There are SEPs and defined benefits and defined contributions, and…this is a pretty confusing landscape, it seems like. There’s probably a few others I’m not mentioning. Who really can do this? Can anybody do it?

JEFF DESICH: That’s the best part about a self-directed IRA, and that is the flexibility and the adaptability to the individual investor. So first off, as long as you are number 1 alive, and number 2 have earned income—so you have W2 income, 1099, income from self employment—as long as you have earned income and you’re alive, you can have one of these accounts, or many accounts. So that’s the first requirement to be in the game. Now, when it comes to these types of accounts, there’s really two ways to look at it. There are individual accounts, where no matter what you do at work, or if you’re self-employed, you can always have them. Those would be a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA. And then we have plans that you would typically have as an employee, or if you’re self-employed, for your business yourself. And those would be a 401(k) or a simple, or a SEP—those are the typical popular plans that you would hear about. So when we look at a self-directed IRA, or a self-directed retirement plan—when we talk about what you can buy or how you can invest, that applies to any type of plan that we’re going to be talking about. So again, if you have a traditional IRA, or a Roth, or if you have a rollover 401(k) from a job maybe that you were with 10 years ago, all of those plans are the funds that you have. You have the ability to self-direct. And that’s really why I think they’ve been so popular—because of the flexibility, and the ease of use.

JASON HARTMAN: Are there any opportunities for someone that has a company 401(k) plan? Are there any ways—we did a story in my newsletter a few years back, and it was very popular when we posted a little video about it. It was called breaking out of 401(k) jail. And I just want to put the question to you, are there any opportunities that someone has inside of a corporate plan, a 401(k) plan, to get more control or freedom with their money?

JEFF DESICH: That is an excellent question. And it’s one that we get every single day.

JASON HARTMAN: And the answer is no! [LAUGHTER]

JEFF DESICH: The answer is maybe. If you are still employed with the company, and you are part of their 401(k) plan, or 403(b), you are confined to what their plan allows. And in corporate America, what we know that typically is is an array of mutual funds, or maybe they might let you invest in individual stocks. But you are limited based on the plan of the company where you work. Now, there are a couple of options. Number one is, if you’re no longer with the company, but you still have your plan with them, you have the ability to roll that over to a self-directed IRA, where you have all of this freedom. If you’re still employed with the company, you have the opportunity—and we talked to real estate investors, I’ll just speak specifically to real estate investors right now but it can be with practically any type of investing. Most people don’t realize that their real estate investing is a business. And because you are in business and you are buying and selling homes, or buying and renting, you have the ability to have a 401(k) for that business. And we have the same basic contribution limits. It obviously depends on every individual situation. But you have the ability to have an individual 401(k), which is just this incredible plan for self-employed individuals. And you can have that plan for your real estate business, even if you are still part of your 401(k) at your normal 9-5 job. So again, there is the ability for anyone, if you’re working 9-5 and you’re in a 401(k) plan now, or if you’re not, to self-direct, and to start taking advantage of your knowledge and expertise in investing.

JASON HARTMAN: And Jeff, is this is so great, self-directing, which I think it is of course, but I’ll just pose the question as a devil’s advocate. If this is so great, why is it that in America only 2% of the market is self-directed, starting way back in the 70s where people could do it? Just people haven’t heard about it? They’re lazy and apathetic and not taking the bull by the horns and getting control of their plans? What’s going on out there? Or is it just the Wall Street propaganda machine? Maybe that’s it.

JEFF DESICH: Well, I think it’s a combination of all of those. But you know, without a doubt, we have a very unique relationship with our customers. Because when you have an IRA with us, we have an annual maintenance fee that you pay every year. It’s usually a couple hundred dollars. And that includes everything. Anything that you’re going to do with that account. We don’t make or charge a commission, or make any money from a mutual fund or a stock that you might buy. So, when it comes to a financial planner, or your stockbroker, there really isn’t an incentive for them to talk to you about this. To tell you about this. Their job is to sell you investments. So right out of the gate, when you’re on CNBC or reading the Wall Street Journal? There’s a whole industry geared towards helping people invest in mutual funds and stocks and bonds. So first off, you’re not typically going to hear this from your financial professional. The second part of it is without a doubt that it does take an investor to say, I want more freedom. I want to look beyond what I have at my bank or brokerage firm. And sure, many Americans just really don’t want to deal with this. Or they don’t want to open up the statements every quarter and see where their account is at. So, it does take some self-motivation. But again, we see tens of thousands of Americans every year that are taking that step and realizing, I need to be more involved with my retirement planning. And that might mean for some people just opening up that quarterly statement, and looking and seeing where they’re actually at. For others, it’s, I want to be more involved with the investments I have in my account, and I want to open up my portfolio and have more diversification. So, I think going back to your question why it’s only 2%, is number one, we think we’re doing a really good job of opening peoples’ eyes and making them aware, but we’re just in the infancy of getting the word out all across the country, and again, it’s for somebody that wants to be involved and recognize that I can hope and wish that in 20 years, or 10 years, or 30 years, that I’m going to have enough money to provide and live the life that I want to. Or, I can be involved and make sure that in 10, 20, or 30 years, I’m where I need to be at.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, and I’ll tell you, Wall Street does a fantastic job of separating people from their money. It’s the old thing of, this broker on Wall Street takes one of his buddies down to show him his new yacht. And the friend says—well, he explains the harbor is full of yachts that belong to friends of his in the brokerage industry, and the Wall Street industry. And the friend says, well where are all the clients’ yachts? [LAUGHTER]

JEFF DESICH: [LAUGHTER]

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, the clients don’t have the yachts [LAUGHTER], the insiders do. It’s incredible. It’s amazing, Jeff—Wall Street has such an incredibly good sales force. And such an incredibly good marketing machine. Yet they have such mediocre—mediocre at best—products, in my opinion. I’ve just gotta ask you, what’s your impression? What do you think of that? Like, how did that come to be, and why is it sustainable?

JEFF DESICH: I would agree in the sense that it is a lot easier to invest a hundred thousand dollars and make a 10%, 20%, 30% return, than it is to invest a billion dollars. And I think again, when we look on such a large scale, it’s difficult, very difficult, to achieve the type of returns that we’re looking for, when we have to invest that much money. And so I think on an individual basis, when we look at our customers and the success that they have day in and day out, it’s because they have the ability to go in and either find a property, or find a potential investment, that they can buy and that they can achieve the returns they’re looking for with it. So I think there is some validity that trying to find those great deals when you have that much money to invest gets more difficult. But I also think it’s to that point of, if you wanna be passive, and you can wish and hope that they’re gonna do the right things and the investments are gonna have the right outcome—your expectations, I think, can be lowered over time. But for those that are more actively involved, there’s a different expectation, and it’s hard to achieve when you’re in the pool with everybody else.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, okay. So, let’s just drill down and clarify what you said and what you’re meaning. I think that what you said is, when you’re a fund manager on Wall Street and you’re pooling money, and you have a billion dollars you need to deploy, the Wall Street type products make it really easy, because you can deploy that money fast. Granted the return will be probably pretty lame. But it’s a big system. There’s a ton of liquidity. There’s like an endless number of products, whether they be these hokey derivative type products that are smoke and mirrors largely in my opinion, but it’s easy to deploy it. Yet for a small investor, for an individual, for a small business owner, if they’re self-directing their plan, and they have a couple hundred thousand dollars, a couple million dollars in the plan, it’s pretty easy to deploy that and make nice returns for an individual investor. And this is one of the things I say Jeff, always to our investors: my famous quote is, “embrace the fragmentation.” And what I mean by that is this. In real estate, for example, it’s a very fragmented business, where in every marketplace—I mean, my company does business in numerous cities around America, and we help people build these national portfolios of property. And so, diversify geographically—take the most historically best performing asset class in America, which is income property, and diversify geographically within that class. And it’s a very fragmented business! Every broker, every property manager, every marketplace, has some different customs, and they do things a little differently, and that frustrates investors at times. But I say to them, embrace the fragmentation. Because the very issue, and the annoyance and frustration that sometimes becomes, is what keeps the big institutional investors out of our business, and leaves the opportunity for the small investor. And you can see it right now. You look at all these funds. You look at Blackstone, you look at a zillion other funds—we have some of them as clients, whether they be private equity funds or hedge funds, that have come into the residential real estate market and they’re buying up houses. This is my observation—they’re finding it difficult to deal with this. It’s just too fragmented for them. They’re spoiled. Their expectations are, hey, I’ve got a couple billion dollars, I can just deploy it with a click of the mouse of a meeting with PIMCO. You know? But in real estate, it’s all this deal and that deal, and it’s real fragmented. Your thoughts on that?

JEFF DESICH: Oh, I would agree, exactly. And if you look at the funds out there buying rental properties—you can buy a property and get a great deal and make 20 or 30% right on a deal. We know that, you know that. It happens. It’s not with everyone every single day, but without a doubt it happens. So you can do that on one. But if you now need to buy a thousand houses, you might have that return on some, but on others, the returns might not be so good. So when you average that out, all of a sudden now you might be back to the 5, 6, 7% return, right? So, without a doubt that fragmentation offers so much opportunity, and for the individual investor it gives you the advantage, versus—it doesn’t help you in a fragmented industry to have more money. It really doesn’t, because it just creates more difficulties for you to run the business.

JASON HARTMAN: Well, a little more money is fine. But when we’re talking billions of dollars, that’s hard to deploy—

JEFF DESICH: Well, I agree.

JASON HARTMAN: Okay, very interesting. Well, okay, let’s talk about one other aspect of this, and I got a hint as to Equity Trust’s position, but there are other companies out there—some of them have been on my show before, and some of them have spoken at my events and so forth—and they talk about one thing investors really like, and that is a checkbook control LLC. Now, the thing I get from talking to Equity Trust is that you guys—and correct me if I’m wrong, but—don’t seem to think that’s such a great idea. And what I mean, just to tell the listeners, is that within an IRA, some investors will set up an LLC, an entity inside of the IRA, and then open a bank account in that LLC, and then go and buy income properties and write checks from that bank account, wire money from that bank account as needed. And that’s checkbook, it gives them checkbook control, so it makes things a little simpler and easier for the investor. But is the IRS okay with that?

JEFF DESICH: I’m glad you brought this up, because we’ve been in this business for 40 years, and one thing that does not change is that every few years, there are new strategies or schemes that are created, hyped up, and they always end up going by the wayside. And with the checkbook control, with that concept, we at Equity Trust, as a custodian, as a regulated entity, as a company that has been in business for 40 years, we look at the checkbook control, and we are very concerned by it. It is very clear that within the law there is a reason for a custodian. And that is the person or the company that holds the assets of your retirement account. And there’s a reason why you don’t have the ability to just walk into your brokerage firm or your bank and just pull money out or put money back in yourself. You have a custodian that does that. You tell us what to do, and then we do it for you. So it’s very clear that the government has created that rule for a specific reason. And by having a checkbook IRA, or a checkbook LLC, what you essentially do is, the client has the ability to write checks or deposit money into an account that is owned by your IRA. Now, the IRS has not had a specific trial or opinion on this, but every year the IRS releases what they call their dirty dozen, and those are either tech scams, or programs that they want to tell Americans, hey, you need to be watching out for this. And in 2011, LLC, these single member LLCs owned in your IRA, made the list. And so, we again, we think that there’s so much potential liability, and when you have an account with a full-service custodian like ourselves, at Equity Trust, we have online bill pay. So if you own property in your IRA and you need to pay the electric bill, or you need to pay for a new furnace, you can do that all online, paperless, just like you would at your normal bank. So the flexibility, I agree, I would love to have a checkbook when it comes to managing properties in my IRA. But, today, this afternoon, I need to take about an hour drive. And I’m going to be going down the turnpike. I wish I could go 100 mph so I could get there quicker, but the speed limit is the speed limit, and I need to obey the speed limit. So at the end of the day, we just feel like there’s a lot of potential risk there. The upside is not in my opinion worth the risk. And we would really tell our clients, and potential clients, that you really want to look hard at that, and really ask yourself, is it worth the risk.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, I’ll tell you, that can definitely present problems. I had a guy named Mike Dillard on my show a while back, and he has this thing called the Elevation Group, and he had one of his guests on who was talking about buying gold inside your IRA and taking possession of physical gold inside your IRA. I tell you, if you do that and the IRS finds out, you’re gonna get nailed. I mean, that is just a complete, from what I understand, violation of the law. It has to be an arms’ length transaction. If you take possession of it—and that’s what they do! Set up an LLC, have checkbook, buy your gold or silver and take possession. Well, you just violated the terms of the deal, right?

JEFF DESICH: Well, yeah without a doubt the government has created the role of a custodian, and this has been here again almost 40 years now. So it’s in our eyes pretty black and white that you need to have your custodian hold your assets. You can have full control—it’s a self-directed account. We don’t do anything unless you tell us to do it. But when it comes to—any time that you have access to those funds, you’re playing with fire.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, I got it. But if you have online bill pay, don’t you run into the same problems? I mean, if the IRA owner can go on and cut checks online, to pay bills, I mean, wouldn’t that just be the same thing? Couldn’t they get themselves into trouble that way as well, or is there some limitation as to how the online bill pay works?

JEFF DESICH: Well, the most important aspect is that we as the custodian write the checks, or send the money. So, you can tell us online, but obviously we’re the ones in the back office that do that. And that’s what’s important, because the custodian is the one that’ sending the money, not the individual client. Same thing with depositing money. You can send us a rental check from your property, that comes from your tenant, and we’ll deposit it into your account, but at that point, you do not have—you couldn’t just walk into the bank and say hey I want the money out of my IRA. Again, you tell us if you want a distribution, and then we code it that way, and we have to tell Uncle Sam, so again, the difference is that the custodian is the one that is paying the bills ultimately, even though you’re going online and instructing us to do that.

JASON HARTMAN: As the custodian, do you sometimes say, oh, this is an invalid transaction? We don’t want to send this one because it’ll get the investor into trouble?

JEFF DESICH: Well, there is—so, there’s two answers to that. Without a doubt, our folks, who are trained—if they see something that they believe is prohibited, we will talk to the client about it, we’ll let the client know about it, and take that appropriate step. So that is an added bonus that you do get when you’re working with a full-service custodian. With that said, we’re not your attorney, and we’re not your accountant, and making calls on if you’re doing things right or not. But I will tell you, if we see something that we feel is out of line, we’re gonna give you a call and say hey listen, we think there’s an issue here—let’s talk about it and make sure that you know, what you want to do is possible.

JASON HARTMAN: Yeah, it’s like the investor has another set of eyes looking at the transaction, and just making sure it’s within compliance. The investor has their own compliance department with Equity Trust, right?

JEFF DESICH: It definitely is an extra set of eyes. And that’s the other thing too, to just go back to the checkbook IRA or LLC, a lot of times folks, once they get started and they have their own checkbook, and they start doing things, you might not have the intention to do something the wrong way, but it’s a lot easier for it to happen. And remember, you need to keep meticulous records when it comes to what your IRA is doing, just in case down the road you ever get audited, you want to be able to present your case, just like anything else in business. Now, when you have a checkbook LLC, you’re the one doing all of that. And I hope that you have copies of your checks, and images, and all the documents, so that when you sold that property 5 years ago, do you still have copies of the settlement statement or the purchase agreement? When you work with Equity Trust, all of that is scanned and imaged. We have full accounts of all your accounts and activities. So again, when you need that, or if you ever do, we’re doing all the bookkeeping for you. We’re doing all the accounting for you. If you go the other route, that’s all your responsibility and your expense as well.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. Well, anything else you’d like people to know? And please give out your website as well, Jeff.

JEFF DESICH: Well, I appreciate that. I geuss first off what I would say is, one of the biggest misnomers that we hear a lot is that well, if we’re going to deal with something, with a self-directed IRA, I’m sure this is something that’s complicated. It’s something that I—maybe it’s too complex for me to do. The truth of the matter is, using a self-directed IRA is very very easy to do. And for 99% of our customers, when it comes to what they’re buying inside of their IRA—if you’re buying a piece of property, and you’re buying a piece of property from a disinterested 3rd party, just a motivated seller that you find out there, the process is very easy to do. It’s very simple, we last year helped our client buy over 13,000 pieces of property all across the country. So this is something that we’re very familiar with. The process is very painless and easy to do. And it’s not as difficult as you might think. So, to take the time, do the homework, and we’ve got some great education, and programs to help you understand this better, and to be able to walk through it and really get that understanding that you’re looking for. And one of the things I‘ll just give out as well—I received from our marketing team, they’re an incredible marketing team, but they said Jeff, when you’re on today, we really applaud people taking action, because that’s what this is really all about. So, for folks that want to know more, we have a special offer that I’m supposed to give out, so I want to do this so that I don’t get in trouble with our marketing folks. But, we have a great program called the Real Estate Success Kit that includes downloads, our guide to self-directed retirement investing. We have a guide about the rules, what you need to know. We have a real estate quick start guide that gives you the basic foundations of what you need to get started using a self-directed IRA. So, it’s a great product because it helps individuals get that foundation that they’re looking for. It’s in a format that’s easy to understand, and to be able to review relatively quickly, and it gives you what you need to get started in the next day. So all you need to do is go to our site, www.trustetc.com, and if you just do back slash offer, and then back slash 053. www.trustetc.com/offer/053. And if you go to that landing page, you can go ahead and get the Real Estate Success Kit, and it gives you everything you need to have to get a solid foundation and to get started in the next 30 days. And that is for everyone that is listening today. A special offer, just for our audience.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. Well Jeff, thank you so much for joining us today, and keep up the good work. Your company certainly puts on some great events, and has great education, and it was a real pleasure to meet your crew when I spoke at your event in Orlando. So keep up the good work, and happy investing to all your clients and all our listeners as well!

JEFF DESICH: Well thank you very much, again I appreciate the opportunity to talk to the listeners today, and I appreciate you coming to our event. Again, with the self-directed IRA investing, it’s just such a flexible opportunity, with so many different options. It really is something that can work for everyone. So, appreciate the time today.

JASON HARTMAN: Fantastic. Jeff, thanks for joining us.

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ANNOUNCER: This show is produced by the Hartman Media Company. All rights reserved. For distribution or publication rights and media interviews, please visit www.HartmanMedia.com, or email [email protected]. Nothing on this show should be considered specific personal or professional advice. Please consult an appropriate tax, legal, real estate, or business professional for any individualized advice. Opinions of guests are their own, and the host is acting on behalf of Empowered Investor, LLC. exclusively. (Image: Flickr | Terra Nova Fondation)

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