Today, I have a very informative article from Paul Kim of Ocho all about the benefits of having a solo 401k, how much you can contribute each year, and how a solo 401k works. Since many of my readers are self-employed, I thought this would be the perfect topic to cover today, as saving for retirement is so important! Enjoy Paul’s article below.

A solo 401k is one of the most powerful wealth-building tools for self-employed individuals. It comes with the highest contribution limits of any retirement plan, tax-free compounding, the ability to invest in any asset class, and more.

I’ve been self-employed for most of my professional life – 9 years to be exact. In my early 20s, I discovered the possibility of making money online, taught myself how to build blogs, learned SEO, and have been making a great living growing content businesses for nearly a decade.

Recently, I joined the team at Ocho as a full-time employee, and many people have asked me why I would ditch working for myself to become an employee.

I have two answers for them:

First, the founder of Ocho, Ankur Nagpal, built and grew his last company, Teachable, to a $250 million business in just a few years. Being able to work alongside him, along with the talented founding team he recruited, is an amazing opportunity. And after nearly a decade of solopreneurship, I crave working as part of a group to achieve a greater goal.

Second, what Ocho is building is something I passionately wanted to exist for a very long time – a supercharged, intuitive solo 401k plan for self-employed people like me.

I had heard of a solo 401k before joining Ocho, but like many people I’ve talked to, eventually dismissed the idea after realizing how complex (and expensive) it can be to set up and maintain a self-directed account. Major banks only offered a cookie-cutter version of the plan without any of the good features, and none of the other third-party providers looked promising enough to trust with my retirement savings.

At Ocho, we launched our self-directed solo 401k plan with checkbook control. And we completely reimagined the sign up flow and user experience to make it as intuitive and accessible as possible.

If you’re a business owner or self-employed (ie. you run a blog, freelance, or are a creator), I’d love to share some reasons why you should look into getting a solo 401k.

Even if you don’t care about retirement savings right now, the tax benefits of having an account can potentially save you tens of thousands of dollars each year.

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