PHYS
Sprott Physical Gold Trust
stock NYSE ETF

PHYS

I give you my blunt advice: stay the f\*\*k away from all of those "Gold IRA" companies -- the fees and fine print are onerous, and that's just the legit ones. Get a Roth IRA in the brokerage of your choice and buy Sprott's PHYS, PSLV or CEF in it. The 401k rollover will be much easier and seamless, and you have the ability to sell within the IRA if some other security (or plain cash) tickles your fancy at any given time.

Several months ago, I was researching moving some of my 401K into a gold IRA. I was unhappy with the companies and their terms so I decided against it.
As an alternative, I chose to move some of my IRA money into PSLV and PHYS, physical silver and physical gold trusts. These trusts are trivially easy to buy and sell through your broker, just like investing in any fund. These trusts only hold PHYSICAL silver and PHYSICAL gold. The metal is held by the Royal Canadian Mint as the depository and is independently inspected. This is not an ETF or other fund where your money may be invested in futures or other investments. Obviously there is some counter-party risk since you are not holding the metal in your own hands but IMO it is minimal risk compared to most traditional funds. If you were going to have your money in a GOLD IRA you would have had to have had a depository hold it anyway and IMO the RCM is likely as trustworthy as you will find. Many people would not be comfortable holding 100s of thousands of dollars in their own home. One burglary and your life savings may be completely gone. Further, liquidating a large amount of physical metal in the retail market can be a pain and may not get you a fair price. This approach provides highly secure storage and ease of liquidation.
Personally, I choose to both stack physical silver myself at home and keep some of my ROTH IRA in these physical trusts. In the unlikely scenario that silver or gold actually go crazy and do a 2X to 10X+ price increase, all of that gain will be legally TAX FREE, since it is inside a ROTH account. I am in no way predicting or counting on metals skyrocketing in price, but if they do, I am positioned to get maximum tax free benefit.

SGOL in taxable accounts, PHYS in IRAs (Sprott PFIC closed-end funds are a major PITA in taxable accounts)

Would only ever use a physically allocated etf like PHYS. There are a few others

PHYS

Look into moving funds inside his 401k into SGOL. Serialized gold allocated to your shares and the gold sits in a Swiss vault so the (US) government cant get it. Relatively low fees involved, way better than the Canadian version (PHYS).
A single tube of 1/2-ounce gold eagles is $90k. That's not hard to store on hand if you've got the right setup and don't talk about shit on reddit.

PHYS

I give you my blunt advice: stay the f\*\*k away from all of those "Gold IRA" companies -- the fees and fine print are onerous, and that's just the legit ones. Get a Roth IRA in the brokerage of your choice and buy Sprott's PHYS, PSLV or CEF in it. The 401k rollover will be much easier and seamless, and you have the ability to sell within the IRA if some other security (or plain cash) tickles your fancy at any given time.

Several months ago, I was researching moving some of my 401K into a gold IRA. I was unhappy with the companies and their terms so I decided against it.
As an alternative, I chose to move some of my IRA money into PSLV and PHYS, physical silver and physical gold trusts. These trusts are trivially easy to buy and sell through your broker, just like investing in any fund. These trusts only hold PHYSICAL silver and PHYSICAL gold. The metal is held by the Royal Canadian Mint as the depository and is independently inspected. This is not an ETF or other fund where your money may be invested in futures or other investments. Obviously there is some counter-party risk since you are not holding the metal in your own hands but IMO it is minimal risk compared to most traditional funds. If you were going to have your money in a GOLD IRA you would have had to have had a depository hold it anyway and IMO the RCM is likely as trustworthy as you will find. Many people would not be comfortable holding 100s of thousands of dollars in their own home. One burglary and your life savings may be completely gone. Further, liquidating a large amount of physical metal in the retail market can be a pain and may not get you a fair price. This approach provides highly secure storage and ease of liquidation.
Personally, I choose to both stack physical silver myself at home and keep some of my ROTH IRA in these physical trusts. In the unlikely scenario that silver or gold actually go crazy and do a 2X to 10X+ price increase, all of that gain will be legally TAX FREE, since it is inside a ROTH account. I am in no way predicting or counting on metals skyrocketing in price, but if they do, I am positioned to get maximum tax free benefit.

SGOL in taxable accounts, PHYS in IRAs (Sprott PFIC closed-end funds are a major PITA in taxable accounts)

Would only ever use a physically allocated etf like PHYS. There are a few others

PHYS

Look into moving funds inside his 401k into SGOL. Serialized gold allocated to your shares and the gold sits in a Swiss vault so the (US) government cant get it. Relatively low fees involved, way better than the Canadian version (PHYS).
A single tube of 1/2-ounce gold eagles is $90k. That's not hard to store on hand if you've got the right setup and don't talk about shit on reddit.

This wouldn’t be the advice I’d give to someone else, but for me personally I’d probably go VT/BNDW/SGOV/PHYS in 50/20/20/10
Someone else I’d tell them it should be in 100% SGOV + maybe a TIPS etf and to simply put aside more than they think they’ll need.
The advice to someone else would depend on what the money’s for. If it money for a downpayment on a house then you could probably get away with simply adjusting your timeline or just putting a smaller downpayment down.
Situational, but yea that’s roughly what I’d do

Do you want paper gold futures or do you want physical actual gold. For the latter, PHYS but it’s a CEF not an ETF

PHYS, not even up for debate