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Brad of Utah credits his self-directed investing for his ability to affect the causes that mean so much to him, and in a meaningful way.
He and his wife recently returned from an 18-month-long humanitarian trip to the poverty-stricken West-African country of Liberia.
“We were serving as missionaries, and the people there are so good and so sweet, and so poor,” Brad recalls. “We can try to explain all we want, but unless you’ve been there, you don’t understand just how hard life is for them. And so, we have committed to try to assist them with some education programs.”
His participation and support of these outreach programs would not be possible if it wasn’t for his alternative investments that are producing passive income in his self-directed retirement accounts. As Brad describes, he could not afford to help others in this way if he relied on other strategies to grow his wealth.
Investments with potential
How does Brad produce the income that allows him to help others as he desires? He diversifies his self-directed retirement accounts multiple asset types. His self-directed IRA holdings include multifamily real estate and private companies.
In his Roth IRA, the primary asset is a small, emerging technology company. The company is not publicly traded yet, so it was a private equity placement.
“If we had our money in CDs earning 0.0005 percent, there's not much we could do to help. Because of the success of our investments, it allows us to invest in and support educational institutions which can provide online education to college students in Africa.”
Brad’s investment is helping to fund the rollout of a non-invasive pain patch. It’s in the early stage, but the product is being sold in retail stores and will be introduced internationally.
“It has had amazing results, and we’re in the middle of some additional, very detailed clinical studies,” he says, adding, “If it ends up going really well, clearly you want really big return assets in your Roth IRA, because they’re not taxable.”
He believes it has the potential to return 10 to 100 times his original investment. While it’s high-risk, Brad points out it’s just a piece of his portfolio.
“It’s just my philosophy to put my higher risk, higher return assets in my Roth IRA,” he says.
Fueling change
The results of these self-directed alternative investments have enabled Brad to make a lasting impact with missionary work.
“If we had our money in CDs earning 0.0005 percent, there’s not much we could do to help (the people of Liberia),” Brad says. “Because of the success of our investments, it allows us to invest in and support educational institutions which can provide online education to college students in Africa, and education is really the only solution to the poverty that so many of those people are dealing with.”
Watch the full interview to learn more about how Brad helps people in need, as well as the other types of investments that are helping him grow his wealth faster so he can participate in causes that mean so much to him.
