For the person seeking to plan their retirement, the current financial turmoil is a little disaster. Chances are the value of your future retirement funds is going down fast. And many people who are worried about this have no idea what to do about it. However if you understand IRA rollovers you can turn disaster into triumph. You need to learn a little about the IRA rollover rules and use these rules to your advantage to profit from difficult times.

An IRA, or an Individual Retirement Account, is a vehicle to allow citizens to invest for their retirement in a tax advantaged environment. IRAs exist so that individuals can build assets so that when the time for their retirement comes they can pay for their own retirement rather than lean on the taxpayers through the government. So an IRA is the perfect vehicle to maximise your investing profits with huge tax advantages.

And in times like these when traditional investments are doing very poorly, it's quite possible to rollover some of your investments into an IRA and make some canny investment decisions from your IRA rollover.

Whether you're planning retirement or even retired, an IRA rollover is not that difficult, and can have some advantages.

For example you may have significant amounts in a current employer retirement plan. Or maybe you've got an IRA now but you're not happy with your IRA custodian. Or perhaps you've got an inherited IRA and want to have more control. Maybe you're recently divorced and the marriage funds have been split.

There are many situations where you could want to rollover into your own self directed IRA.

You will need to choose a custodian, preferably a good one who will help you with the IRA rollover rules and IRA setup. And you need to be careful when choosing your custodian. Some custodians limit the range of investments you have available to you, often to their own products.

However the major advantage of an IRA rollover is that you can then invest your own funds yourself as you choose, so you don't want to limit your IRA investment options to only those offered by the custodian. So choose a custodian that allows you freedom to make your own investment decisions.

Once you've concluded your IRA rollover, if you've chosen your custodian well, you can make your own decisions regarding investing your retirement funds. You should seek to invest in a wide range of different investment vehicles to ensure you have a balanced portfolio.

However it is difficult in the current economic times to make balanced investment decisions. Luckily there are very good advisors who can guide you through the IRA investment process and also help with IRA rollovers at the same time. So there's no need to be worried about how your rollover will go if you choose a good advisor.

And despite the fact that economic times are tough there are still some excellent investment opportunities available. Some are even improved with the difficult economic conditions.

I've been reading about one of the best IRA real estate investments that I've seen in years. No cash down real estate investing through a well respected listed US public company that offers high quality real estate investments to both credit investors and IRA and 401(k) investors. Investors can secure loans even now when loans are extremely hard to come by, and secure good quality investment properties with no cash down, tenants provided and income guarantees, at a discount to the market.

It sounds a little too good to be true, but when you find out how they're doing it it makes supreme sense, and you wonder why you never thought of it yourself.

So if you've been considering an IRA rollover to allow yourself to self manage your IRA, then go ahead. It's not that hard, and even now, in tough times, there are excellent IRA investments that offer superior returns and allow you to provide for a comfortable retirement.