Investing with a small SD-IRA?

[Chris Johnson]

This might be a stupid question so bear with me. I have a SD-IRA for my child's college fund. It only has $6,000 in it. Any suggestions for investing an amount this small somewhere in the world of real estate? Or maybe I should just stick with something like a mutual fund or bonds until it grows larger. Thanks!

[Ian Ippolito]

Are you an accredited investor? If so there are a few crowdfunding sites that have $5000 minimums, that you could invest through a self-directed IRA. Patch of land, Fundrise, Realtyshares And Peerstreet all have $5000 minimums (or less).

If you are not accredited, then another option is to invest in peer to peer loans, such as The Lendingclub. Currently that's returning me about 7% very safely. The key is to diversify into at least 100 loans (and 250 is even better). No one that has done that has lost money to date. Since the minimum is $25 per loan, you could easily have more than 250.