Just increased my 401k percentage

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If the market really starts to skid into March 2020 levels, I may up it to 50% for a few

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How are you going to put half your income into your 401k and stay under the annual limit?

Good move
Target 20% and leave it there

Front loads the contributions. System should be smart enough to recognize when he’s capped.

I bumped to 20% in march 2020 and it worked out very well for me.

I did the same again about 10 days ago. It missed last fridays pay cycle, but i have a good bonus check in 2 fridays. So the timing should still be solid for the year.

For what it is worth, my employer has a safe harbor for when i go over the 401k cap. I dont dare stop the 401k contribution because i would lose the 4% match. Im commission based anyway, so it is near impossible to hit the cap on the money with a percentage contribution.

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Baw makes about 50k I’d guess.

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you can put a shite ton into a solo401k which is the best 401k plan if you work for yourself.

employee contribution
owner profit sharing
possible catch up contribution depending on age

Very smart move.

Just make sure you’re maxing out the 401K dollars every year. Wife and I have both done this every year for the last 22 years, and our results have been great.

Signs we’re nowhere close to a bottom

Every time I read one of these posts, I remember how poor I am. How in the hell are you investing 18% funds with the current inflation? Is your house paid off? Are you making well above 100k a year? Together the wife and I are at $115k , and granted we bought a house, all of the furniture and 2 cars only a few months apart, with this current inflation and possible recession, no way I could invest anymore than I currently do.

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Every time I read one of these posts, I remember how poor I am. How in the hell are you investing 18% funds with the current inflation? Is your house paid off? Are you making well above 100k a year? Together the wife and I are at $115k , and granted we bought a house, all of the furniture and 2 cars only a few months apart, with this current inflation and possible recession, no way I could invest anymore than I currently do.

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What a lot of people do wrong is try and go from zero to hero or little to a lot in investing when they "figure things out" financially with investing which generally can be tough to do for reasons you state. To go from investing 0% or maybe a few % of your income to say 15-20% really quickly is really difficult if you have the current lifestyle you have. The best time to do something like that is first career job out of school where you werent earning an income or much income previously and now you are. If you start out high, you learn to live with what you have leftover.

The problem is majority of people arent coming out into a career job in their 20s and immediately throwing a ton into retirement. But after working for some years, or maybe into your 30s at some point you realize the value of investing and want to start increasing your contribution. If you're at say 3-5% or something to get a match in 401k and want to start increasing that, dont feel like you have to go to 15-20% overnight. That would be tough for just about anyone to do considering what you learn to live on.

The way my wife and I have done this for years now is any time we get a raise, whether it's substantial or more inflation based, we increase our 401k contribution each time. For example, if we were at 7% then get a 3% inflation raise, we put out contribution to 8%, so we still feel the inflation raise, but also increase our 401k slightly. If we get a bigger raise/promotion type deal where say we get a 10-20% type pay increase, maybe then we decide we want to up our 401k by like 5%, so if it's at 8%, take it to 13%. You'd be surprised how much this helps over time. No this doesnt take you from zero to hero in a matter of a year or two investing, but over a decade or so you'd be surprised how much increasing it will help and you dont even really notice any impact to your day to day living.

I think it's also important to note I prefer a balance to investing over YOLOing it all in a 401k to max out. IF you have $20k of income the last thing I'd do is stick it all into a 401k. I'd get the match in the 401k, max out a ROTH IRA (backdoor or regular method), and also put a healthy portion into a brokerage account, then take the 401k up from the match from there. So my wife and I's 401k's we arent really close to maxing out, but we are both maxing out ROTH IRAs and have a healthy amount of money going into a brokerage account every month. Meanwhile when our pay increases, we just put some of that new money into bigger (%) 401k contributions.

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Is your house paid off?

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mine has been for 10 years.

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Are you making well above 100k a year?

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most here make well over that.

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Together the wife and I are at $115k

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most combos are making well over 200k.

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no way I could invest anymore than I currently do.

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i have invested well over 50% of my income for a long time.
DO you not have any other sources of income? rentals? taxable dividends? lending? trade futures? options? you may want to start looking to make money in other ways.