If you invest in real estate, you probably already know about the big tax strategies like depreciation, 1031 exchanges, and borrowing against your equity. And those work great. But there's another strategy sitting right in front of you that most investors either don't know about or don't use enough. It's not a loophole. It's not a gimmick, and it could completely change how you build wealth with real estate. It's called self-directed retirement account investing, and in this episode, I'll show you exactly how it works in the real world.

And I'll show you three different ways I see smart investors using it today. And thanks

to today's sponsor Heritage IRA. They're my preferred vendor for self-directed retirement

account investing. More about them later in the episode. Now, before we get into the nitty-gritty details, I want to start with the idea of

self-directed.

What does it mean to self-direct your retirement account?

Now, I'm assuming most of you are familiar with retirement accounts.

It might be a 401k, it might be an IRA,

there's other types of accounts. And most of the time, you buy traditional investments like stocks and

bonds, and there's nothing wrong with that. In fact, I like investing in those things as well.

But self-directed just means that you can actually invest in alternative assets, including

real estate inside the umbrella of a retirement account. So everything you've learned about real

estate investing, buying rental properties, loaning money to people or partnering with other people

to buy real estate, you can do those things inside of a retirement account, but you have to have a

special kind of a retirement account, a custodian who allows you to self-direct it. So what's so

great about investing in real estate inside of a retirement account anyway? I'll give you a few possible reasons. Number one, if you're listening to this episode or

watching it on YouTube, you probably already like real estate. And I bet you're confident

that if you invest in real estate, you're going to do better growing your wealth, making more

money. And so this just gives you a chance to invest in the thing you like, real estate,

and not just be isolated to having stocks and bonds. The second reason, though, is that the very nature of a retirement account is this tax advantage. You have a Roth IRA account, you invest in that account and you don't pay any taxes as it grows, and you don't pay any taxes when you take it out. You have a traditional type of retirement account. It grows tax deferred. You don't have to pay any taxes during every transaction when you buy or sell something, and then you pay taxes once you take it out. That tax advantage is huge. If you've ever looked at the math of compounding, if you invest inside of a retirement account or do the same exact investment outside of a retirement account, not having that friction

of taxes can make a huge difference. You will grow a lot more wealth because every time you sell a

property, every time you collect rent, you're not having to pay taxes on that and it can grow bigger

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