How does a precious metal IRA work? Metal IRA, mainly gold IRA, is one of the investment items that are considered beneficial and profitable. Well, you may wonder what IRA. IRA stands for Individual Retirement Account, meaning that it is gold that is worthy to invest for your retirement. It works very similarly to regular retirement investments. The difference is that the product is in the form of gold. There are some reasons to choose metal IRA as the investment. Some of them are explained below.