Gold IRA Companies in Fort Worth Meet Texas's Only All-in-One Municipal Pension

Gold IRA companies in Fort Worth are selling into a city of 918,915 residents at the 2020 Census, since grown to an estimated 963,194, built around an aerospace-and-rail economy that doesn't look much like Dallas's twenty minutes east. It also runs one municipal quirk no other Texas city bothers with: the Fort Worth Employees' Retirement Fund is the only public pension in the state that folds general city workers, police officers, and firefighters into a single plan instead of splitting them the way Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio all do. That single-fund structure closed 2023 at 53.40% actuarial funded — a number worth knowing before any Fort Worth household starts moving retirement money into a self-directed gold IRA, if only because it changes what's actually sitting inside a city paycheck versus what's parked at Lockheed Martin, American Airlines, or BNSF down the road.

The Fort Worth Employees' Retirement Fund traces back to a 1945 city ordinance, and its all-in-one design is still unusual enough that the fund's own materials call it out as the only municipal retirement plan in Texas covering general employees alongside police and fire. Membership has grown past 11,000: more than 6,000 active workers and nearly 5,000 retirees and beneficiaries already drawing a benefit, all overseen by a 13-member Board of Trustees — four seats elected by active employees, three by retirees, the rest appointed by City Council. The most recent actuarial valuation, dated December 31, 2023, put the fund at 53.40% funded on an actuarial basis and 55.11% on a market basis. Not the 32.2% hole Dallas's police and fire fund is digging out of, but not a fully funded position either.

Fort Worth's employer base leans harder into aerospace and logistics than anywhere else in North Texas. Lockheed Martin runs roughly 19,000 employees out of its Fort Worth complex at Air Force Plant 4, the government-owned, contractor-operated F-35 production line that delivered a record 191 aircraft in 2025. American Airlines keeps its global headquarters here, and BNSF Railway runs its roughly 37,000-employee freight network out of a Fort Worth address as well. Cook Children's Health Care System, which topped 9,000 local employees and landed at No. 41 on Forbes' 2026 Best Large Employers list, rounds out healthcare. None of those four companies share a 401(k) provider or a plan design, but a Lockheed engineer's account, an American Airlines employee's plan, and a Cook Children's nurse's 401(k) all roll into a gold IRA the identical way — direct, trustee-to-trustee, no 60-day clock, no early-withdrawal penalty for anyone past 59½. Sitting next to Air Force Plant 4 is Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, the former Carswell Air Force Base, home to 40 tenant commands and 4,553 personnel — 2,175 of them active duty — that the base says contributed $4.7 billion to the Texas economy in 2025. A federal Thrift Savings Plan balance, whether from active duty or a civilian NAS JRB position, rolls into a gold IRA the same way a 401(k) does. Military retired pay itself, like the FWERF pension, doesn't roll over — it's a defined-benefit annuity, not an account with a balance to move.

Fort Worth's citywide numbers — a $79,507 median household income and a $303,000 median home value, both as of 2024 — flatten out real spread across a city that stretches nearly 30 miles from the Stockyards to the Chisholm Trail. ZIP code 76244, covering the Alliance area in far north Fort Worth built around the AllianceTexas industrial and logistics park, runs a median household income near $122,217. ZIP code 76109, the TCU and Bluebonnet Hills area anchored by Texas Christian University, comes in around $100,507. Head south instead and the Near Southside — Fairmount, Ryan Place, Mistletoe Heights, and Berkeley Place across ZIP codes 76104 and 76110 — carries some of the city's oldest housing stock and a noticeably lower income floor, even as the same streets fill with the restaurants and clinics driving the district's redevelopment. The Cultural District in 76107, home to the Kimbell Art Museum and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, adds a third, museum-anchored identity of its own. Property taxes don't follow any of that variation — Tarrant County, the City of Fort Worth, Fort Worth ISD, Tarrant County College, and JPS Health Network combine to a roughly 2.24% effective rate on assessed value citywide, regardless of which of those ZIP codes a deed sits in.

Get the full first-year fee schedule in writing — setup, annual custodian costs, storage, and the markup over spot — from at least three companies before signing with any of them. If the funds are coming from City of Fort Worth employment, confirm whether the account in question is the mandatory FWERF pension, which doesn't roll over on its own regardless of whether the job was general, police, or fire, or the TIAA-administered 457 plan, which does. If the funds are federal instead — active duty, retired military, or a civilian position tied to NAS JRB Fort Worth — sort out whether it's a Thrift Savings Plan balance, which rolls over, or military retired pay, which doesn't, before signing anything. And ask any custodian directly whether it defaults to the Texas Bullion Depository in Leander, roughly 180 miles southwest of Fort Worth, or ships metal out of state without being asked. The fund that actually matters here isn't the one at City Hall — it's whichever account someone's about to move into a Fort Worth gold IRA, and confirming what kind it is comes before comparing a single fee schedule.