A self-employed 401k plan is a great way to save for retirement if you are an entrepreneur or solopreneur. A self-employed 401k plan is also know as a Solo 401k plan. This article will discuss how much you can contribute to your self-employed 401k plan.

For 2020, the IRS says you can contribute up to $57,000 in your self-employed 401k plan. The amount should go up by $500 – $1,000 every one or two years.

If you’re at least age 50, then you can make an additional $6,000 catch-up contribution, which increases your limit to $62,000. 

The $57,000 self-employed 401k plan limit consists of $19,500 from the employe and $37,500 from the employer. Therefore, to contribute the maximum to your self-employed 401k plan, you must pay yourself enough and have high enough operating profits.

In general, you can contribute up to the maximum employee amount to your Solo 401k plan + 20% of operating profits.

Self-Employed 401k Historical Contribution Limits

For those of you who are self-employed or side-hustling with a full-time job, this article will help you figure out how much you can contribute to your tax-deferred Solo 401k with an example.

You can’t just write a check for $57,000 or $62,000 if you’re over 50. There’s a formula you need to follow based off your operating income. I’m personally shooting to contribute $100,000 a year pre-tax in a Solo 401(k) and SEP-IRA given I am an employee and a freelancer.

Remember, if your employer has you in a 401k plan, you can open up a SEP-IRA if you’re side hustling. And if your employer has you in a SEP-IRA, you can open up a self-employed 401k to contribute more pre-tax dollars to your retirement.

If your employer has you in a 401k plan, you can also open up a self-employed 401k. However, it wouldn’t make sense to do it because the total employee contribution is limited to $19,500 across all your 401k plans. The contribution limit goes up by $500 every couple years on average.

When you first graduate from school, you may have a desire to make six-figures a year. Then once you make six-figures and get taxed out the wazoo, you start wondering how to create next-level wealth.

Next-level wealth is based on net worth, not income. Earning a top one percent income is nice, but paying over a 40% marginal federal + state tax rate isn’t.

If you want to create next-level wealth, your goal should be to create as much equity as possible that is never sold.

You can build as much wealth as Jeff Bezos so you can laugh at all of us peasants trying to make ends meet during a global pandemic! You and the next 100 generations of Bezoses would become untouchable.

Right before the pandemic began, I did a fun podcast interview with Andy from Marriage Kids & Money, a work-from-home solopreneur. It was nice to connect with another father of two young children in the online world.

Andy took a leap of faith at a very similar age as me in 2012. Although my main goal for leaving finance wasn’t to build Financial Samurai into a business, this site ultimately ended up generating supplemental income to help keep my wife and I away from work.

Now that I’m stuck at home, I’ve been spending more time understanding the online business world. It’s truly fascinating to learn what some people are doing nowadays to make money online. Their websites are slick. Their marketing strategies are focused. And hopefully they are making good money as a result.

If you’re considering becoming a work-from-home solopreneur, here’s Andy’s advice on how to make it happen.

You never know unless you try!

Becoming A Work-From-Home Solopreneur

Transitioning from full-time employee to a work-from-home solopreneur can be quite a big step for people to take. This is especially true as a young parent. Not only are we caring for our own financial and physical well-being but we’re also focused on protecting our spouse and children as well. 

Thoughts about this big decision had weighed on me for the past few years as I found a side hustle that I absolutely loved. I started a podcast and blog called Marriage, Kids and Money after a bad day at work in 2016 and treasured every minute I could spend working on it. 

At the same time, I was rapidly losing interest in my full-time career in corporate event marketing. I had been in the industry for over 15 years and felt I’d done a good job and climbed the ladder as much as I felt comfortable. It didn’t feel like there was much else I could do in my career or in the industry as a whole. 

One of the glaringly obvious issues with leaving my job was that I was only making $30,000 per year with my side hustle and $180,000 with my full-time career.

Further, that doesn’t include all of the incredible benefits my employer provided like healthcare, dental, paid vacation, 401k match, an Employee Stock Ownership Program (ESOP) and much more.  

So I had a choice to make … 

Do I leave my cushy, well-paid, corporate job in hopes that I’m able to pay myself $180,000 in the future with my side hustle?

Or do I keep moving forward with my 9-5 career in corporate event marketing, keep pursuing financial independence and hopefully retire early?

After many discussions and encouragement from my wife, I chose to leave my career earlier this year. Here’s how I did it and what I’ve learned after 6 months as a solopreneur. 

You may ask yourself: why start a business? The better question to ask yourself is: why haven’t I started a business already! The pandemic has forced many of us to get creative and business formation has skyrocketed in 2020+.

When I started Financial Samurai in 2009, I didn’t started it as a business. I started this site as a cathartic way to get through the financial crisis. I had a job, but was losing lots of money in the stock market and real estate market. Writing provided the creative outlet I needed to get through a difficult period.

But partially thanks to starting Financial Samurai, I was able to walk away from my day job in finance in 2012 and do something I loved: write. More than 11 years later, I still write three times a week. Now, Financial Samurai is technically a business as it generates online revenue.

Why Start A Business? A Better Life

My #1 business goal is to leverage my online media company to lead a better life. To do so, I need to maximize profits and minimize expenses since it’s my money at risk.

In contrast, for investor funded startups, it’s more about growth at any cost with less concern for profits because they are spending other people’s money. My plan is to never rely on anybody for money. Bootstrapping is the way to go because one day funding may dry up.

Let’s take a look at a venture-funded company called Buffer, which enables you to schedule your social media shares online. Buffer has raised about $4M and is valued at roughly $40M based on their last round of funding. I’m thankful Buffer is completely open with their finances, because it allows other entrepreneurs to learn from their actions.

Let’s have a look at Buffer’s monthly Profit & Loss statement to see why running a business can provide for a better life.

Self-publishing a book is one way to make money from home. If you have your own website, you can sell the book there. You can sell your book via your social media platforms. Or you can also sell your book via Amazon and other established online book platforms.

As someone who has self-published his own book about severance negotiations, I’m considering self-publishing a whole series of books. I figure, if we’re going to be stuck at home forever, we might as well create more products for online consumption.

My book was originally published in 2012 and is available exclusively on the Financial Samurai platform. Since publication it has gone through four iterations and is updated for the new decade. After almost eight years, the book has generated around $250,000 in profits.

If I hadn’t slacked off, I could have self-published one book a year since 2012. If each book sold as much as my severance negotiation book, I would have made more than $1,000,000 by now. It’s too bad so much hard work is required to make money nowadays.

In this post, I’d like to compare and contrast the benefits of self-publishing versus traditional publishing. I’ll also delve more into how much you can make writing a book. I’m assuming we’re all trying to figure out more ways to make money from home.

If the coronavirus pandemic has taught us one thing in business, it’s that if you have a business that can’t be shut down you will outperform. In some cases, you might even thrive as we heard from one online business seller of nutrition and home exercise equipment. As a result, online business valuations are going to increase.

The forced lockdowns by our governors and mayors have decimated local businesses like restaurants, gyms, retail stores, and dental practices. Meanwhile, the coronavirus has upended the travel, hospitality, and entertainment industries even if these industries were allowed to open. As a result, unemployment reached a record high.

The value of a business can be calculated by the net present value of its future cash flow. The value of a business can also be calculated based on a multiple of revenue, operating profit, or net profit.

All else being equal, if your business’s earnings are more certain, your valuation multiple goes up and vice versa.

I’m formulating a plan for another online business during this latest recession and I’m absolutely pumped there is now such a huge tailwind!

Sometimes you take a leap of faith and your dreams don’t come true. Society has romanticized the notion of being an online entrepreneur. I’ve technically been one since 2009, when I started Financial Samurai. I’m here to say that not everything works out as planned. You often need to commit for at 10 years to see great success.

Leaving a boring job to do your own thing is scary, especially when there’s so much uncertainty int he world today.

There’s nowhere to hide when you’re responsible for everything. At the same time, there’s nothing more rewarding than creating something from nothing. No promotion or raise comes close.

Recently, a reader asked, “What do you think you’d be doing now if FS hadn’t worked out so well for you? Back to the IB grind, real estate tycoon, build a tennis school…other? Might be an interesting article unto itself, I know you’d get at least one interested reader.“

I haven’t thought about this situation since 2012, when I first left my day job. Further, after writing, “Career Or Family: You Only Need To Sacrifice At Most 5 Years Of Your Life,” I definitely won’t be going back to work full-time until 2022, at the earliest.

But this is a good thought experiment to ponder because I’m sure many of you might be wondering what if you took the leap of faith and things don’t work out either.