If you come from the future and the best investment vehicle you can think of is a 401k, you don’t deserve to be a time traveler.
Maybe there’s a framework of rules that the time traveler must adhere to (or risk being disintegrated by the time police).
For example, specific knowledge of the future is off-limits, but it’s OK to give basic advice as long as it’s already general knowledge for the time period you’re traveling to. Make sound investments, eat right, exercise, don’t smoke, etc.
Maybe it’s not the best, but it’s the correct one. Clearly future self knows something we don’t
In before future self just forgot to check and is just trying to make the best use of it
My headcannon is that he’s already come back several times with amazing investments and it turns out it goes bad every time. He just ended up going for something more reasonable/healthy cause nothing else worked.
I’d argue heavily that you should consider a Roth IRA instead. You pay the taxes now, instead of later, which saves you an insane amount of money in the end.
Um… that’s not quite right. Here’s the thing, if you earn $100k and invest it in pre-tax (401k) or post-tax (Roth), and you pay the same tax rate throughout, then with both investment strategies you will end up with EXACTLY the same amount of money. The only benefit of a Roth is if you assume you have a higher tax rate in the future when you want to pull it out. If your tax rate is the same both now and in the future, then Roth and 401k are equivalent investment vehicles. If you don’t believe me, do the math yourself.
Slightly more detail. The reason this is true is that return on your investment and the tax are both percentages of your base investment and the math doesn’t care which order you multiply one versus the other. So let’s say you make a 500% return on your investment and the tax rate is 30%
$100k * (0.7 tax rate) * (5 ROI) = $350k Tax first Roth
$100k * (5 ROI) * (0.7 tax rate) = $350k Tax after 401k
So the take-aways are:
401k wins if you have company matching. ALWAYS invest at least up to company matching because that’s free money.
Roth wins if your tax rate in the future is higher than now. (this is not necessarily a good bet because your tax rate will probably be lower once you’re retired.)
There is also a ROTH 401k. Same tax benefits, but with higher limits and all of the 401k benefits.
In general, a 401k, 403b, or other employer sponsored retirement plan is going to be a better deal than an IRA. With a401k, your employer is paying for your account; with an IRA, you are paying for the plan out of your returns (via fees, lower interest, etc.). Also, it is common for employer sponsored plans to match part of the money you put in.
You can also have both a 401k and IRA to double dip on investment limits, but only if you are in a particular income bracket (you cannot contribute to an IRA if you have a high income and you are not likely to be able to max out a 401k if you have a low income).
If you can alter the future it might make sense. Say I tell you to invest in whatever comes after NPTs. Maybe your investment will alter the course of what happened. However I seriously doubt that 10% of your income in an index fund will alter much. Also, there is a problem with getting money too early. You go back and give young you lottery numbers, they make bank and die of an O.D. a decade later.