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In an ever-evolving financial landscape, securing your wealth requires more than just traditional savings. As the world navigates economic uncertainties, precious metals like gold and silver have emerged as steadfast pillars of stability.
Enter Lear Capital, a seasoned player in the precious metals market, promising to guide investors through these turbulent times. But how does it truly measure up in the realm of investment opportunities?
In this comprehensive review, we'll dive deep into Lear Capital's offerings, reputation, and performance, helping you make an informed decision about whether it deserves a place in your investment portfolio.
Overall, it's a decent company but there are some issues you should know. Stay with us as we unravel the facts and unveil what sets Lear Capital apart from the rest.
Before we get started with this review:
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Lear Capital Products and Services
Lear Capital offers a range of products and services that include:
It offers the flexibility of transferring funds or rolling over part of your existing IRA for investment into precious metals IRA.
The physical metals are kept safe in a private storage facility. However, the precious metals IRA also provides the same tax benefits as a normal IRA.
The company also offers rare coins as well as platinum, silver, and gold bullion (some options are IRA-eligible) on its website. The online store isn't reachable at the time of writing this review.
You will also find a comprehensive resource library on their website that includes market charts, an encyclopedia on precious metals as well as helpful guides on retirement accounts and precious metal investments.
Why Put Gold in Your IRA?
Individual Retirement Accounts (IRA) protect your retirement as well as your family's financial security.
These special accounts allow you to set aside tax protected savings that you can use in the future.
With these long term accounts it's important to allocate a significant portion to assets that are solid and reliable, so you have a worry-free retirement.
You can have cash in an IRA, but that is devaluing at a rapid pace and inflation is out of control.
You need an asset that's dependable, retains it's value, and even increases in value over time, and there is no better asset for this than gold.
With the world's economy struggling through lockdowns, shortages, wars, and inflation, uncertainty has never been higher and investors are protecting themselves by placing physical gold in IRA's.
A gold IRA investment prospers from these crisis that negatively affect most other assets.
Risk is knowing the economic dangers and doing nothing to protect yourself and your family.
Safety is knowing the economic dangers and taking action to protect your financial future, and this is easy to do with a gold IRA.
Starting an IRA with Lear Capital
Precious metal IRAs offered by Lear Capital provide an easy way for you to diversify your portfolio. The first step in the process is to start your own IRA precious metals account.
They have a dedicated processing department for helping customers with their application process. It shouldn't take you more than 10 minutes to complete the application process.
Every new customer gets a dedicated customer representative to help them through the process. Once you have provided the required information and your application is processed and approved, you will have an account within 24 hours.
Once your account has been opened and you want to roll over your existing IRA funds into precious metals IRA, a team member will work with you to guide you through the process.
The company offers a variety of precious metals including gold, silver as well as other precious metal coins that comply with the IRS guidelines for IRA. Once your account has been set up, a team member will help you choose the right gold IRA.
A clear description of various options (including pictures) is available on their website. Keep in mind that the prices you see on the website are real-time prices which means these will keep fluctuating throughout the day.
Once you have chosen an option and are ready to check out, you'll get 10 minutes to complete your order at the ordering price before the price changes.
Once you have put in the order, you will get up to 48 hours for completing payment for your order. Payments can be made by wiring money over the phone or by mailing a check. Both these options have different processing times.
If you wire the money, it will take about a week to process whereas check processing will take around 2 weeks. This is why Lear Capital encourages customers to wire the money as it's faster.
After purchasing the coins, you will need to sign the Shipping and Transaction agreement. It ensures that coins are safely shipped to you or deposited in the Brinks Coin Depository, as per your choice.
Costs
As an account-holding customer with Lear Capital, you will be charged a fee of $180 annually. This fee covers shipping, insurance, 24 x 7 online access to your account, and quarterly financial statements.
You don't have to pay any application fee, as of February 2021.
However, the company may charge commission and storage fees on buying gold. Lear Capital requires a minimum investment of $7,500.
Distribution
One of the main advantages of investing in precious metals is that they tend to retain their value over a long period. Precious metals have been known to maintain their value even when the economy is poor.
These may also appreciate during economic downturns. On the other hand, a conventional IRA typically loses value during an economic downturn. This is why precious metal IRAs are widely viewed as a hedge against such market risks.
With your precious metal IRA, you also have the option to take physical possession of metals in your account for distribution. You don't get such an option with regular retirement accounts.
Like your regular retirement accounts, you may opt to sell the metals in your account and get cash. Keep in mind that in case of liquidation, your account will be subjected to annual Required Minimum Distributions.
If you want to know more about the tax implications of liquidating your account and for more information on gold IRAs, get in touch with a Lear Capital representative.
Advertising
Many financial companies are known for aggressive marketing of their product and Lear Capital is one such company. It markets the products which it sells such as gold IRAs.
The company is known to air more than 200 commercials on TV, every 30 days. These commercials are aimed at promoting various precious metal IRAs offered by Lear Capital.
These commercials are designed to portray precious metals investment as a sure thing. Having said that, there is no risk-free investment out there, although these days the benefits of having tangible, physical, real assets, compared to infinitely multiplied paper and digital products, is undeniable. But it is also important to remember precious metals like any asset, also experience volatility.
For instance, the current predictions expect gold to hit a record high in the next 15 to 18 months. In simple terms, even though the value of precious metals isn't linked to the stock market, they may also experience significant fluctuations in price.
You need to be aware of these fluctuations to enter the market at the right time.
Customer Reviews
The overall customer reviews point towards outstanding customer service, but there are some issues. Most customers believe that representatives at Lear Capital help them understand the product before making a purchase.
Consumers also mentioned that the customer care team is thoroughly professional and helps them with their problems.
"I have been very pleased with Lear Capital. They are easy to work with, extremely professional, and execute your requests in a very timely matter. Our transaction was painless, and I received the items I purchased quickly.
I couldn't be happier with the service I got with this company. I plan on using Lear Capital for future purchases as well."
- Stephen of Cedar Park, TX - 5 star rating on Consumer Affairs
"Information and guidance. The Lear team took the time to educate me, answer every question I asked (even the dumb ones), and made the acquisition experience seamless and simple.
I have the utmost confidence that doing business with Dana, James and Lear is one of the best investment decisions I've ever made. Peace of mind? Absolutely."
- David Jones - 5 star rating on Trustpilot
"Bill (William) was awesome! He was super kind and patient answered all of our questions very thoroughly! He walked me through the step by step process to move our traditional IRAs that were housed at our credit union over to gold and silver!
Thank you so much for excellent customer service and communication!"
- Rachael DeLavern - 5 star rating on Google
"I don't know if I over paid for my purchase, but the delivery was on time, gold looked & felt great. Great communication with the Rep. All I can say transaction was good, hopefully the sold me good stuff!"
- Ronnie F. of New York, NY on Yelp
Buying Back Coins
No guarantee is offered by Lear Capital when it comes to the buyback of coins. However, if the company does decide to make an offer, they are likely to offer the market price at that time.
Storage Facility Used by Lear Capital
There is a Brinks Depository in Salt Lake City in Utah and all the gold is stored there. Lear Capital is the insurer of the gold. At the depository, Lloyds of London, which is the insurance company used by the depository, is the insurance provider.
Typical Fees Charged
Each customer is charged $180 annually. This fee covers storage, insurance, 24 x 7 access to an online account, and quarterly financial statements. They may also charge commissions and storage fees on purchases of gold.
Credentials
As far as Lear Capital's credentials are concerned, the company is a member of the Professional Coin Grading Service, Business Consumer Alliance, Industrial Council for Tangible Assets, Numismatic Guaranty Corporation, and Trust Link.
IRA Eligibility Of Coins Sold By Lear Capital
You can find this information on Lear Capital's website. As far as the general requirements are concerned, the guidelines require gold bullion to be at least 99.5% pure, platinum bullion to be at least 99.95% pure, and silver bullion to be at least 99.9% pure.
Tracking Performance of Your Portfolio
Self-directed IRA services Inc. is the IRA custodian. They will provide you with online access to your account where you can track the performance of your portfolio. In addition, you will also get quarterly statements directly sent to your home address.
Is it possible to make direct contributions to your Lear Capital account?
It is possible to set up a recurring schedule for automatic transfer of your contributions to your IRA.
Conclusion
Overall, Lear Capital is one of the most well-known dealers of precious metals. They offer all kinds of investment options in precious metals.
Their knowledgeable customer service representatives make things easy for investments in gold and silver. They are always available on phone to take customers through the investment process.
They offer a variety of options including buying and shipping precious metals directly to customers' homes or investing in precious metals IRA for tax exemption.
While it's true that Lear Capital makes things easy for their customers, but the market is full of alternatives.
If you're wondering whether Lear Capital is the right choice for you, the only thing we can say is that here at BMOGAM Viewpoints, we do recommend them. Ultimately, it's your decision.
While we think that Lear Capital is a good company, they do occasionally have some issues, but their customer service team works fast to remedy them. If you're looking for a company to invest in precious metals or to set up an IRA with them, Lear Capital is a solid choice.
You can get a Free Gold Investors Guide from our top gold and precious metals company recommendation by clicking the link above or you can read our article of the top companies we reviewed this year:
>> CLICK HERE to read our list of the Top Gold IRA Companies. <<
Or, if you like what you have read about Lear Capital, you can go to their website below:
I started BMOGAM Viewpoints as a way to compile all my views on investing in one place. I own my home, have some real estate, and own a few stocks like most people, but what really drives my interest in investing is I have a strong love of precious metals, especially gold.
