Gold IRA Companies in Exeter, NH Serve the Town Behind a $1.65 Billion Prep School Endowment

Exeter's median household income doesn't look like much next to Windham's $189,583 or Bedford's $167,418. At $110,346, spread across roughly 16,205 residents in the 03833 ZIP code against a $456,600 median home value, it sits closer to the statewide figure than to the wealthiest towns on this site. That's the wrong number to fixate on, though. Gold IRA companies working Exeter aren't dealing with one uniformly high-earning suburb — they're dealing with a town whose real financial weight sits in its institutions rather than its paychecks, starting with a prep school endowment bigger than the annual budget of most New Hampshire counties combined.

Phillips Exeter Academy has run its campus at 20 Main Street since 1781, and as of February 2026 its endowment stood at $1.65 billion — funding more than half the Academy's operating revenue with 217 faculty teaching roughly 1,078 students. None of that touches how a retiring staff member's own account works, though. The Academy funds a 403(b) plan through TIAA and Fidelity, contributing 9% of salary below the IRS step-rate threshold and 12% above it for employees under 50, with a flat 12% for staff 50 and older — all of it vested from the date of hire, no waiting period.

Exeter Hospital is a 100-bed, tax-exempt community hospital employing around 1,400 people, and in 2023 its parent, Exeter Health Resources, joined Beth Israel Lahey Health — a Massachusetts-based nonprofit system — after New Hampshire's Attorney General signed off on the deal. Vested retirement money doesn't disappear in a merger like that. But a health system change of that size is exactly the kind of event that quietly moves a 403(b) or 401(k) from one plan administrator to another, and an employee who hasn't checked their statement since the transition may not know which entity's plan document currently governs their account.

Exeter sits at the confluence of the Exeter and Squamscott Rivers, and its compact, walkable downtown still carries the mill-town bones it was built on before shipbuilding and lumber gave way to a Colonial and Federal-era historic district. The American Independence Museum anchors it — the Ladd-Gilman House, a National Historic Landmark built in 1721, and the Folsom Tavern next door, built in 1775, together holding one of the few surviving Dunlap Broadside copies of the Declaration of Independence. That kind of downtown draws steady tourism and supports a layer of small businesses and professional practices that neither the Academy nor the hospital payroll accounts for. A meaningful share of Exeter gold IRA rollovers start with the sale of one of those businesses, or a historic downtown property, rather than a single employer's retirement plan.

New Hampshire repealed the Interest and Dividends Tax effective January 1, 2025, closing out its last tax on any form of household income — an Exeter resident taking a traditional gold IRA distribution today owes zero state tax on it. New Hampshire also has no IRS-approved precious metals depository, so metal bought through an Exeter gold IRA ships to a licensed vault out of state, typically Delaware, Texas, or Utah, and a legitimate custodian discloses exactly which one in writing before any funds move. That zero tax rate is identical for every gold IRA company serving Exeter, so it isn't what separates one from another. Setup fees, annual storage costs, and the buyback spread are — pull quotes on all three before opening an account, whether the money started as a 403(b), a hospital 401(k), or the sale of a Water Street storefront.