I get better investment options and lower expense ratio through my Roth IRA.

Our team has been pounding the pulpit for five years about how favorable our tax brackets are and helping clients conduct moves such as IRA to ROTH IRA conversions in order to take advantage of the current tax deal of our lifetime.

One consideration as you are working on locating private lenders, is that IRA, 401(k), and other retirement accounts can be used in many cases to make private money loans.

After a few additional email interactions that same day, your DoC stated "I do not have an answer for you.

She has some stock (maybe 50k), some retirement IRA of around 100k which I believe she has started to take and then maybe 20k in her savings account.

Quote from @Eamon Conheady: I was purchasing a multi family through an IRA LLC and was utilizing debt to finance it, requiring a non-recourse loan.

I moved all of her old retirement money into a self directed IRA/Solo 401K and started putting her money to work through real estate lends.

A real estate business can also potentially generate a SOLO IRA or something like that. 

While sophistication of your equity partners (private money lenders) will vary between residential and commercial, the principle of raising private capital is the same.You need to develop your own system which allows a constant stream of PML even when you don't need the funds and/or don't have an active deal under contract.For example; I raise private capital by offering free educational workshops for people with self-directed IRAs.

As a US citizen I have an SSN, file taxes every year on my foreign employment income, hold US-domiciled assets (stocks, IRA, 401k), and I have a ~15 year credit history with a decently high score.