Insane Strategy to Speed Run Retirement
Introduction
This is NOT Financial Advice
Because of my current employer’s retirement plan options, I’ve been aggressively investing. In the United States you are allowed to invest a maximum of 70,000 dollars in 2025 including employer match into the 401k plan. For me this is 23,500 dollars in the traditional 401k, 11,500 employer match, and 35,000 in the taxable bucket which is immediately transferred to the Roth in plan conversion bucket. I also have an HSA account that has a maximum of 4150 and Roth IRA which has a maximum of 7000. 2000 dollars of the HSA is given up front by my employer at the beginning of the year but I can’t max it out immediately because the maximum allowable investment via payroll is very low.
I also am enrolled in the employee stock Employee Stock Purchase Plan and have RSU vests throughout the year.
My Terrible Plan
This is Still NOT Financial Advice
In order to take advantage of employer match and the additional converted funds in the Roth 401k, I set the maximum amount in the 401k which is 80% of pay. For the traditional 401k, it’s faster because it’s 80% of my pay before taxes but the taxable converted amount is after taxes. Then for most of the year I sell RSUs and ESPP to cover my living expenses. There are also a few months at the end where I save the 7000 dollars to max the Roth IRA in the beginning of January and fill up my regular brokerage account as fast as possible.
I do have an emergency fund that never goes below a threshold in the worst case that I have to pause contributions due to company stock tanking hard right before vest, I get laid off, or some other emergency occurs.
Some Math
This is Still NOT Financial Advice
To simplify this calculation I will only count the dollars I put in my retirement accounts and not in my regular taxable brokerage.
If I started at 0 dollars, averaged out the contribution amount per month, then it would take about 10 years to cross the 1.1 million mark at 6% return per year. Values in investment calculator
It would take 16 years to reach 2.1 million
Psychology of Being Lazy
This is Still NOT Financial Advice
One of the reasons I think this strategy is easy for me is that I can be very lazy. Everything is done by my employer so I only need automation for my personal accounts that go off in the last few months of the year. If I get a raise, I just need to move back the start date for my personal brokerage automation and increase the dollar amount. I also like automation because it decreases the number of potential terrible decisions made when attempting to manually invest. It’s also fun to see a bunch of consecutive 0 dollars net paychecks at work.
Factors Outside of My Control
This is Still NOT Financial Advice
Of course market instability and inflation are outside of my control. Inflation in particular is concerning post tariffs. Because my assumption of 6% is pretty conservative, I don’t mind just splitting US/Foreign Index funds weighted to market cap. In hindsight I should have probably bought VT (Vanguard Total World Stock ETF) but I think my allocation of FZROX(Fidelity Zero Total Market Index Fund) and FZILX(Fidelity Zero International Index Fund) is fine for me and won’t be too burdensome to deal with during retirement. I also considered just getting an index target date fund which is what I recommend (BUT NOT YOU READING THIS IN PARTICULAR) to my friends and family who don’t want to think about rebalancing or dealing with their portfolio during retirement.
Optimism as GenZ Person
This is Still NOT Financial Advice
I actually do believe that being nihilistic is detrimental to achieving a goal like this because you might miss amazing market years or multi decade compound interest. Even if I only contributed the bare minimum to reach half of my employer match that would still be
Closing Message
This is Still NOT Financial Advice
Follow me for more terrible execution of sound principles.