Small Business Owner Retirement Entity Question

[Keith Ghion]

HI everyone,

Hoping to gain some insight to this question, I've searched the forums and haven't seen this specific question answered though I can't imagine I'm a unique case.  I'm trying to figure out the best vehicle to use if I wanted to use a retirement entity to invest in real estate including notes, possible hard money lending, flips etc, or if  the benefits of investing through a retirement vehicle  would outweigh investing without one. 

I'm a small business owner (non-real estate) with two employees one full time one part time.  My income varies a bit from year to year sometime significantly so I'd need flexibility to contribute more or less from year to year.  A a solo 401k would be negated as I have said employees which I'd think would be the best to use. I have a personal Roth that I contribute to but balance is sub $100k and most of it is tied up in mutual funds at the moment. 

So I'm looking at either a SEP IRA or Simple IRA with SEP likely being the way to go since contribution limits are higher however my understanding is that I have to contribute the same percentage wise for my employee as I contribute to myself which could get cumbersome.

All of the above considered would the benefits of investing through a retirement vehicle outweigh investing without one.  As these vehicles are tax deferred one concern is future tax rates and who knows what they will be but I know a lot of savvy investors use their accounts to great benefit especially say where note investing is involved for example. 

Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks for checking this out.