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Personal finance author and radio host Dave Ramsey cautioned investors about self-directed Individual Retirement Accounts (SDIRAs) as he explained how this retirement savings strategy can be risky.

For investors who like options, the SDIRA gives people the power of choice.

“But hold up,” Ramsey warned. “As niche investments, self-directed IRAs can get complicated fast.”

“They often involve high-risk investments with complicated fees — and you’ll carry the burden of more responsibility for your investment choices, too,” he added.

Unlike conventional traditional or Roth IRAs, a SDIRA offers the same tax advantages while granting one the flexibility to hold alternative assets — such as real estate, private equity, and commodities — that standard brokerages typically prohibit.

“Self-directed IRAs have a lot in common with their close cousins, the regular traditional and Roth IRAs,” Ramsey wrote. “They’re designed to offer the same kinds of tax benefits, whether that’s tax-deferred growth (traditional) or tax-free growth and withdrawals in retirement (Roth).”

Choosing between traditional SDIRAs and Roth SDIRAs

Choosing a Roth versus traditional SDIRA requires weighing illiquid asset payoffs against upfront taxes. A Roth SDIRA is exceptionally powerful for explosive, early-stage private assets: paying taxes on a low initial valuation allows potential massive future gains — like a multi-million-dollar land sale or private stock payout — to be withdrawn entirely tax-free.

Conversely, an illiquid asset held in a traditional SDIRA will eventually trigger hefty mandatory taxes upon retirement distribution, often forcing owners to liquidate hard-to-sell assets just to pay the IRS.

There is another important nuance when choosing between a traditional SDIRA and a Roth SDIRA.

Vetted Prop Firms CPA Dat Ngo points out that people making this decision often focus only on tax implications.

“One thing I always walk clients through is the idea that the Roth vs. traditional decision isn’t just about where you expect tax rates to go — it’s about your income trajectory right now,” Ngo told me. “If you’re in a lower tax bracket today and expect meaningful income growth over the next decade, paying taxes upfront with a Roth contribution is often the smarter long-term move.”

“That said, for someone already in a higher bracket who anticipates a lower income in retirement, the traditional IRA’s deduction can provide real, immediate relief,” he added. “There’s no universal right answer, which is exactly why people should run the numbers for their specific situation rather than defaulting to a rule of thumb.”

Personal finance author and radio host Dave Ramsey cautions investors about self-directed IRA risks while detailing a sensible approach to navigating them.Shutterstock

Dave Ramsey explains how SDIRAs are different

What truly sets a self-directed IRA apart is the freedom it gives you to deploy account funds into non-traditional asset classes.

“Regular IRAs offered by most brokerage firms only allow you to invest in certain types of traditional investments — like stocks, bonds and mutual funds, for example,” Ramsey wrote. “But with a self-directed IRA, you could potentially use retirement funds to invest in real estate, small businesses and cryptocurrencies.”

“Most folks who open a self-directed IRA typically use them for long-term investments that are more difficult to buy and sell than stocks, bonds, or mutual funds (which can be bought with the click of a mouse),” he continued.

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In financial terms, self-directed IRAs are tailored for relatively illiquid assets that cannot be quickly converted to cash on public exchanges.

Beyond illiquidity, SDIRAs carry severe regulatory traps. The IRS strictly prohibits transactions involving “disqualified persons” (such as buying real estate from a spouse or parent), which can instantly disqualify the entire account and trigger back taxes plus penalties.

Additionally, debt-leveraged assets inside an SDIRA can unexpectedly trigger Unrelated Business Income Tax (UBIT), and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) frequently warns that lack of custodian oversight makes these accounts prime targets for fraudulent investment schemes.

During my years of experience reporting on retirement savings, I’ve often covered various ways of investing in IRAs. With SDIRAs in particular, it’s important to know that, by leveraging account capital, investors can branch out into tangible real estate, raw land, and livestock, or pursue alternative commodities like precious metals, oil, gas, and water or mineral rights.

These accounts also provide avenues to back private businesses, hold cryptocurrency, purchase tax lien certificates, and issue debt instruments such as promissory notes.

Ramsey, IRS clarify IRA contribution requirements

Ramsey emphasizes an important point.

“Yes, you can have both a regular and a self-directed IRA at the same time,” he wrote. “There’s actually no limit to the number of individual retirement accounts you can own.”

Regardless of how many individual accounts investors maintain, their combined annual deposits must remain within the overall contribution ceiling mandated by the IRS.

“For 2026, the total contributions you make each year to all of your traditional IRAs and Roth IRAs can’t be more than $7,500 ($8,600 if you’re age 50 or older), or if less, your taxable compensation for the year,” wrote the Internal Revenue Service.

The relevant IRS docs to dive into for further information are IRS Publication 590-A (Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements), and IRC Section 4975 (on prohibited transactions).

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as individualized tax or investment advice.

Related: Dave Ramsey has straight answer on whether your 401(k) is enough

Sandisk Corp. (SNDK) is losing its everyday shoppers, and fast. Its consumer arm sells the memory cards and flash drives that made the brand famous. That business lost more than a quarter of its sales in three months.

Consumer revenue fell 29% from the prior quarter to $397 million, according to Sandisk’s fiscal first-quarter results. On the earnings call, Chief Financial Officer Luis Visoso said the drop came “as the market adjusts to higher pricing.”

That is a polite way of saying Sandisk charged more and shoppers bought less. The admission came inside a record quarter, which makes it easy to miss.

Also read: Sandisk’s next chip could save cloud giants billions, but not us

Shoppers are paying more and buying less

Consumer sales also fell 39% from a year earlier, according to the same results. A year ago, that business brought in about 28% of Sandisk’s revenue. Today it accounts for less than 4%.

Booming data-center sales explain part of that shrinking share. Yet consumer dollars fell too, and with prices rising, unit sales almost certainly fell faster than revenue.

Chief Executive David Goeckeler still called the consumer arm “a differentiated strategic asset” in his prepared remarks.

That is the tension in plain view. Sandisk calls its shoppers strategic while its own price tags push them away.

Sandisk’s consumer revenue fell 29% in fiscal Q1 to $397 million as the market adjusted to higher prices, even though data-center sales jumped 61%.NurPhoto / Getty Images

Data centers are getting the flash first

Every memory card, phone, and server drive draws from the same supply of NAND flash chips. Sandisk is steering more of that supply toward data centers built for artificial intelligence, where customers sign multi-year contracts.

Data center revenue jumped 61% from the prior quarter to $4.8 billion, according to the release. Goeckeler said Sandisk “allocated more supply to address the growing demand from this end market.”

Those contracts now cover about half of Sandisk’s fiscal 2027 output, Visoso said. That leaves a thinner slice for the store shelf. The low end of its edge business, which supplies phone and PC makers, also shrank.

Melius Research analyst Ben Reitzes opened the Q&A by tying Intel Corp.’s (INTC) weaker PC outlook to memory costs.

Goeckeler conceded that PC unit sales fell this year and will be “slightly down next year.” That means fewer devices sold, each carrying more storage at a higher price.

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Wall Street trims targets as Sandisk stock slides

Sandisk shares were down 12% by midday Oct. 30 despite an earnings beat, CNBC reported.

The sell-off hit the Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM), where Sandisk makes up about 4% of holdings, according to StockAnalysis. The fund fell more than 8% by the afternoon, a sign that a memory basket offers little shelter.

The bigger blow came from Japan. Kioxia Holdings Corp., Sandisk’s flash manufacturing partner, warned that price gains are stalling, Bloomberg reported. Its NAND selling prices rose about 20% last quarter, after a 70% jump the previous quarter.

Sandisk’s own numbers tell a similar story. Pricing drove two-thirds of its growth in the quarter that ended in July, according to its fiscal fourth-quarter release. This time, pricing drove about 40%, Visoso said, and he guided to only “modest” increases ahead.

Put that next to the consumer slump, and the picture sharpens. Price gains are cooling at the top of the market just as they break demand at the bottom.

On paper, the stock looks cheap. Analysts expect about $215 a share in adjusted fiscal 2027 profit, according to StockAnalysis. At the Oct. 30 price, that is less than six times earnings, a discount usually reserved for profits expected to fade.

Wall Street still mostly likes the name, though the Oct. 30 trims undo part of earlier target hikes. StockAnalysis shows a consensus Buy rating from 25 analysts, with an average price target of $2,144.

Here are the latest calls, in pre-split dollars:

Hold, $1,300 target, down from $1,550: Wells Fargo’s Joseph Quatrochi, Oct. 30

Buy, $2,000 target, down from $2,500: Bank of America’s Wamsi Mohan, Oct. 30

Buy, $2,300 target, maintained: Barclays’ Thomas O’Malley, Oct. 30

Sandisk’s outlook hinges on the March quarter

Sandisk guided fiscal second-quarter revenue to $12.2 billion to $12.6 billion, according to the release. Split-adjusted trading for its eight-for-one stock split is set to begin Friday, Nov. 20, 2026, according to an SEC filing.

The real test comes after that. Visoso told Goldman Sachs analyst Jim Schneider that “our Q3 is normally our weakest sequential quarter.” That quarter covers roughly January through March.

I see two companies inside one quarter. The data center business looks durable, with multiyear contracts and customers coming back for more. The consumer business shows where pricing hits a wall, and that wall gets closer as price growth cools.

If you already own the stock, I would not sell into a slide driven by fear of a peak. I would trim only if Sandisk has grown into an outsized slice of your portfolio.

Profits kept climbing, yet the stock has roughly halved from its 52-week high of $2,354.39.

If you are on the sidelines, I would wait for the March quarter report. That seasonal low will show how much pricing power Sandisk has left.

For most of its history, Sandisk sold flash to shoppers first and servers second. This quarter shows that the order has flipped, and the shopper now waits at the back of the line.

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A laptop is a tool you touch all day, just not usually on the screen.

Your hands live on the keyboard and trackpad. The display sits upright, a foot or two away, and that setup has barely changed in decades.

Apple liked it that way. For years, the company argued that reaching up to poke a laptop screen was a bad idea, even as rivals added touchscreens to Windows machines.

That stance made the Mac different from almost every other premium laptop. It also kept Apple’s line between the Mac and the iPad clear.

So when Apple finally put touch on a Mac, the obvious question was whether it works. One of the most-watched tech reviewers on YouTube just gave his answer.

Apple (AAPL) announced the MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display on Oct. 28, calling it the first Mac with Touch, according to its press release. Pre-orders are open, and the laptops will reach customers and stores on Friday, Nov. 6.

Marques Brownlee, the YouTube reviewer known as MKBHD, tried it in a first-impressions video titled “Macbook PROLED XDR Impressions: They Said They Wouldn’t!” His verdict on the headline feature was cool.

“It’s still kind of sloppy and messy to use it,” Brownlee said, Dexerto reported.

What MKBHD didn’t like about the touchscreen Mac

Brownlee laid out his objections plainly. “I never want fingerprints on my display,” he said, adding that he also never wants “the display wobbling around as I’m touching it,” according to Dexerto.

He also didn’t want to “hold my arm out and have my arm get tired.”

That’s the same complaint Steve Jobs made about vertical touchscreens in 2010. “It doesn’t work, it’s ergonomically terrible,” Jobs said at the time, Gulf News noted.

Here are the main problems Brownlee flagged, according to Dexerto and Gulf News:

The screen still wobbles. Apple stiffened the hinge slightly, but the display still moves when pressed.

No Apple Pencil. The MacBook Pro doesn’t support it.

Mac apps aren’t built for fingers. Most desktop software still assumes a keyboard and trackpad, and many demos he saw involved mis-touches and fumbles.

Apple adapted the Mac rather than rethinking it. He said Apple is “adapting for you,” for example by enlarging small buttons so they’re easier to tap.

Tom’s Guide Editor-in-Chief Mark Spoonauer raised the same Pencil gap in his own hands-on. “We’ll have to see how well touch works with third-party apps,” he wrote.

Marques Brownlee called Mac touch “sloppy and messy” but praised the OLED screen and weight.Mario Tama / Getty Images

Why MacBook Pro with PROLED XDR Display costs you $400 more

This is the number I’d focus on. The 14-inch touch model with the M5 Pro chip starts at $2,899, while the existing 14-inch MacBook Pro with the same chip and a mini-LED screen costs $2,499, PPC Land reported.

Apple is keeping the mini-LED models on sale alongside the new ones, MacRumors reported. So the $400 buys the OLED panel, the touch layer, the lighter body and the Dynamic Island, not more computing power.

Related: Apple is about to break a rule Steve Jobs defended

Here’s how the lineup stacks up in the U.S., according to Apple and PPC Land:

14-inch MacBook Pro, M6: $1,999

14-inch MacBook Pro, M5 Pro (mini-LED): $2,499

14-inch MacBook Pro, M5 Pro (PROLED XDR, touch): $2,899

16-inch MacBook Pro, M5 Pro (PROLED XDR, touch): $3,399

14-inch MacBook Pro, M5 Max (PROLED XDR, touch): $4,499

16-inch MacBook Pro, M5 Max (PROLED XDR, touch): $4,799

By my math, the touch model costs 16% more than the same-chip mini-LED version. It’s $900 more than the M6 MacBook Pro, Apple’s cheapest new Pro.

If you split the $2,899 base price over 12 months, that’s about $241.58 a month before tax.

Apple’s Upgrade lease, run through Klarna, starts at $78.99 a month over 24 months at that price, according to Apple. A lease isn’t ownership, though, so read the terms before you sign.

What MKBHD liked about the new MacBook Pro

It wasn’t all bad. Brownlee found the touchscreen responsive and smooth, with multi-touch gestures, pinch-to-zoom, and touch window management, Dexerto reported.

He also saw a clear use for iPhone app developers, who can tap a simulated iPhone on screen. And he said he’s “fine” with touch as an optional feature, even if he’s “personally not interested.”

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The display and the weight impressed him most. “I’d upgrade for the weight savings before I would for the touchscreen,” he said, according to Dexerto.

Apple’s numbers back that up. The 14-inch model weighs 3 pounds, half a pound lighter than before, and the 16-inch weighs 4 pounds, according to Apple. The OLED panel hits 2,000 nits of peak brightness with a 10,000,000:1 contrast ratio.

“PROLED XDR is the world’s best laptop display,” said Johny Srouji, Apple’s chief hardware officer, in the release.

Brownlee also noted that the nano-texture finish feels softer to the touch and that both finishes hide fingerprints well, Gulf News reported.

Who should buy the touchscreen MacBook Pro

Based on Brownlee’s take, here’s how I’d sort it:

Photo and video pros: The screen is the real upgrade, and touch is a bonus.

iPhone app developers: Touch makes testing apps on a simulated iPhone more natural.

Frequent travelers: The half-pound weight cut matters if you carry it every day.

Everyone else: The $2,499 mini-LED model has the same chip. The $1,999 M6 model may be all the laptop you need.

Microsoft Word, Excel, Zoom, and other apps are getting touch support “later this year,” Apple said. If touch is your reason to buy, waiting for those updates costs you nothing.

Should you pre-order before Nov. 6?

If you’re on the fence, I’d treat this like any big purchase. Decide what you’re paying for, and make sure you’ll use it.

Students and teachers can save $150 on the 14-inch model, which drops to $2,749 with education pricing, according to Apple. Trade-in credit can also take a chunk off the price.

Brownlee’s verdict is a useful filter.

If you want the best screen on a laptop and a lighter bag, the new MacBook Pro delivers.

If you’re paying $400 extra mainly to touch the screen, you may be paying for the part of the Mac that still needs work.

Related: JPMorgan resets Apple stock price target amid iPhone panic

Verizon’s CEO Dan Schulman, who took over the top spot about a year ago, made a bold statement during his first earnings call in the top job.

“We must shift to a customer-first focus and redefine our trajectory,” he said.

That’s a bold statement from a company that was relentlessly teased, along with AT&T, by rival T-Mobile and its former CEO John Legere from 2012-2020. Legere dubbed T-Mobile the “Un-carrier.”

It’s a term that was used broadly to describe T-Mobile’s efforts to change how wireless companies treated their customers. It started with things like dropping overage charges, ending long-term contracts, and offering clear pricing, while simply treating customers better overall.

“Un-carrier has become synonymous with 100% customer commitment. We set out to change the game, and the results speak for themselves. See the moves that got us to where we are today,” the company shared on its website.

Now, at a time when you can argue that T-Mobile has lessened its focus on continuous customer-facing improvement, Schulman wants Verizon to take that title, and he appears to be making progress.

Verizon has one focus

When he stepped into the job, Schulman made it clear that he was not proposing small changes.

“This is not a course correction. It is a fundamental change in our strategic approach to customers. The only way we can drive sustainable value for our shareholders is by significantly raising our game and winning responsibly in the market,” he said.

CEOs, even new ones, rarely admit that their company needs major change, but Schulman embraced the idea and, one year later, he seems pleased with Verizon’s progress.

Schulman introduced Verizon’s “Simplicity Plan,” a flat-rate, unlimited wireless plan, and revamped its loyalty program.

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Verizon’s customer-first strategy has coincided with a sharp improvement in subscriber growth and customer retention.

Verizon reported postpaid phone net additions of 406,000 in Q3 2026, an 820% increase year over year, according to its third-quarter earnings release. In addition, more customers chose to stay with the carrier during the quarter, too, with consumer postpaid phone churn improving slightly to 0.87% for the quarter.

The growth, the company noted, has been a pattern.

Acquired nearly 1.7 million mobility and broadband subscribers in the first nine months of 2026, compared to 879,000 in the first nine months of 2025.

Mobility and broadband service revenue reached approximately $23.5 billion, representing a 2.9% increase year over year, continuing a sequential improvement from 2.8% in second-quarter 2026 and 1.6% in first-quarter 2026.

“By prioritizing customer-first offerings like Simplicity and our expanded loyalty program over heavy subsidies, we are winning loyal, high-value customers while expanding margins, reducing churn, and generating strong sustained cash flow,” Schulman said.

Verizon saw a large gain in phone customers in Q3.Shutterstock

Verizon’s rival probably isn’t T-Mobile

The American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) measures consumers’ satisfaction with wireless providers, offering a broader picture of how customers view their carriers.

Even with all of T-Mobile’s focus on customer service over the years, the difference between the carriers has never been that large.

ACSI

The room for growth, however, may not be from Verizon taking share from T-Mobile or AT&T. Instead, traditional carriers are battling Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs), which are lower-cost, prepaid services that rate much better with consumers.

ACSI

Former ACSI Managing Director David VanAmburg explained why MVNOs have an edge, noting that network quality isn’t a significant differentiator between the traditional carriers and the MVNOs that use the same networks.

“Customer satisfaction differences in MVNOs and MVNOs then come down to everything else such as flexibility, pricing, and value propositions,” VanAmburg told FierceWireless in 2019.

“Here, MVNOs are doing better than [traditional carriers]. One distinguishing factor is MVNOs’ prepaid options offer more flexibility than [traditional] contracts.”

Verizon has the right idea

I’ve been a T-Mobile customer since Legere took over and dropped overage charges. I’m not sure of the exact date, but probably sometime in 2013, because the company seemed focused on user experience and customer satisfaction.

At the time, I appreciated the clear pricing, promise of no increases, and not having to worry about overages.

Now, roughly 13 years later, I don’t feel the same loyalty because Legere’s successors, first Mike Sievert (2020-2025) and currently Srinivasan Gopalan (2025-present), just don’t seem as focused on customer service as Legere was.

That’s anecdotal and not backed by ACSI data, although the success of MVNOs suggests the big-three wireless carriers have room to make gains. But there’s also room to claim the disruptor crown that T-Mobile has slowly moved away from.

“As T-Mobile has grown, so too has the institutional pressure around it. T-Mobile is no longer a hungry, scrappy challenger. It’s a big dog, and with that comes stockholder pressure, increased infrastructure costs, and pressure to cut costs in staff and training,” Android Authority’s Andrew Grush wrote in July.

He offered some concrete examples.

“After years of slowly marching away from its Un-carrier image, T-Mobile started sprinting hard over the last year or so. Not only have we seen the death of all-inclusive taxes and fees, but the entire way the company approaches its customers is a complete reversal of the legendary Legere era. Most recently, T-Mobile has announced plans to migrate its legacy users over to newer plans as it retires Magenta, Simple Choice, and a handful of others,” he wrote.

Grush was not subtle in his assessment of the changes.

“And with this move, the final nail in Un-carrier’s coffin has now been hammered into place,” he added.

That, perhaps, gives Verizon an opening. Schulman certainly thinks so.

“We put our customers front and center, and we vowed to reclaim our market leadership and play to win. We have accomplished a lot, and today’s Verizon is in a fundamentally better position operationally, financially, and competitively,” he said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call.

Related: T-Mobile introduces phone plans with new rules for customer perks