The Three Situations Where You Might Consider an Early Withdrawal From Your Self-Directed IRA

Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It’s important to understand that the default IRS regulations regarding early withdrawals from an IRA. In general, taking a distribution from your account before age 59½ will subject you to a 10% penalty on the amount of the distribution, plus whatever taxes may be due.

In each of the situations below, there are specific requirements that need to be met in order to avoid having to pay the 10% penalty, but in all cases you still may owe taxes on the amount of the distribution. Pay close attention to all the requirements. If you make a mistake in the distribution process it could prove to be quite costly.

  1. To Purchase a First Home. The IRS regulations allow you to take a distribution of up to $10,000 to pay for a down payment on your home if you are a first-time homebuyer (which is defined to mean that you haven’t owned your own home in the past two years). You can also use this penalty free provision to assist a child or grandchild with their down payment, if having access to these additional funds would make the difference between getting a home and not – but it may be worth forgoing future growth of those funds
  2. For Certain Uninsured Medical Expenses. There are actually two situations in which you can use your self-directed IRA in order to pay for some of your medical expenses. The first is in situations where you need to pay for certain unreimbursed medical expenses. The second situation is to pay for medical insurance premiums for you and your family when you are unemployed. one reason taking this type of early withdrawal can be so important is that it eliminates any temptation that might otherwise exist for you to underinsured or yourself or otherwise not seek necessary medical care.
  3. Higher Education Expenses. The third exception we’ll discuss is taking an early withdrawal in order to pay qualified educational expenses. Generally this means paying tuition or room and board for your child, but you can also make such a withdrawal for your own educational expenses, those of your spouse, or those of a grandchild.

There are no limits for how much you can take out of your account early for these purposes. However, given that an early distribution means that you’re losing out on the long-term growth potential of those funds, you may wish to explore other funding options first, including student loans (which in some cases can involve interest and that’s tax-deductible).

In fact, in each of these three situations, it’s always important to consider other alternatives prior to taking an early distribution from your self-directed IRA. Just because you’re authorized to do so doesn’t mean there isn’t a better way.

In addition to losing out on future investment growth, there are other ways in which taking an early distribution can be a bad financial decision. For example if you need to liquidate certain investments early, then the effective loss you experience by taking the early distribution is effectively much greater than the amount of the distribution.