The Shocking Mega Backdoor Portfolio

Currently, the median retirement account balance for Americans approaching age sixty-five sits near eighty-seven thousand dollars, while software engineers at technology firms like Meta, Alphabet, and Nvidia routinely build tax-free portfolios exceeding three million dollars before their fiftieth birthdays. This massive disparity does not stem from superior stock selection or extreme frugality. It results from a highly specific, poorly understood exploitation of Internal Revenue Service Section 415(c). The mega backdoor Roth is a mechanical tax loophole that allows specific high-income workers to stuff tens of thousands of post-tax dollars into their corporate defined contribution plans directly above the standard elective limits. Wealth managers quietly position this strategy as the most aggressive tax shelter available for high-earning professionals. It bypasses the traditional income phase-outs that normally restrict standard Roth Individual Retirement Account contributions. As corporate payroll departments continuously upgrade their benefits platforms through major custodians like Fidelity and Charles Schwab, access to this aggressive maneuver has leaked out of the exclusive executive suite and onto the standard engineering floor. Any highly compensated professional who ignores this structural advantage leaves a massive, entirely tax-free fortune on the table for the federal government to claim later.

The Mechanics Behind the Mega Backdoor Roth

Understanding the internal code of the American retirement system requires reading the exact language the Internal Revenue Service uses to define contribution limits. Most workers only look at the Section 402(g) limit, which dictates the maximum amount of salary a person can voluntarily defer into a pre-tax or standard Roth 401(k). At this moment, that standard elective deferral limit sits in the low twenty-three thousand dollar range for employees under fifty years old. People hit this specific number, assume they have mathematically maximized their retirement options for the year, and redirect their remaining cash flow into standard taxable brokerage accounts. They are entirely wrong. The actual ceiling on a retirement account operates under a different section of the tax code. Section 415(c) dictates the total allowable inflows into a defined contribution plan from all sources combined. This overall limit sits roughly near seventy-three thousand dollars annually right now. The gap between the standard elective deferral limit and the massive total limit represents an untaxed frontier waiting to be filled.

Closing that gap requires understanding exactly how money flows through the corporate payroll system and lands in the custody of a brokerage firm. The mega backdoor strategy forces high-earning individuals to voluntarily deduct money from their net paychecks, route it into a specific non-deductible category within their employer's plan, and immediately convert it into permanent tax-free Roth status. Doing this correctly generates incredible wealth over a twenty-year timeline. Doing it incorrectly creates an administrative nightmare involving highly taxed earnings and frustrating penalty fees.

Pre-Tax Deferrals Versus the After-Tax Bucket

A standard defined contribution plan contains three highly distinct accounting buckets. The federal tax code treats each bucket differently upon distribution. The first bucket holds the employee's elective deferrals. This money either goes in pre-tax, immediately reducing current taxable income, or it goes in as a standard Roth contribution, using after-tax dollars that grow tax-free forever. The second bucket contains employer funds. Corporations provide matching contributions, profit-sharing deposits, or safe harbor non-elective contributions to incentivize participation and pass regulatory testing. Historically, the Internal Revenue Service mandated that all employer money land in a pre-tax status. This rule meant the employee would owe ordinary income tax on every dollar of company match withdrawn during retirement planning. Recent legislative changes technically allow employers to offer matching contributions in a Roth format. Adoption among corporate payroll providers remains sluggish.

The third bucket represents the true engine of the mega backdoor strategy. This is the after-tax non-Roth bucket. Congress originally created this category decades ago for employees who wanted to save beyond the elective deferral limits but did not care about receiving an upfront tax deduction. Money deposited here receives no immediate tax break whatsoever. Any growth on this money is subject to ordinary income tax upon withdrawal. Nobody should ever leave money sitting permanently in the after-tax non-Roth bucket. Its entire existence in modern financial planning serves purely as a brief staging area. Cash enters this bucket through payroll deduction and must exit this bucket through a Roth conversion almost immediately to prevent taxable earnings from accumulating.

Contribution Bucket	Tax Treatment on Entry	Tax Treatment on Future Growth
Elective Deferral (Pre-Tax)	Immediate Tax Deduction	Taxed as Ordinary Income
Employer Match	Pre-Tax (Standard)	Taxed as Ordinary Income
After-Tax Non-Roth	Post-Tax (No Deduction)	Taxed as Ordinary Income
Converted Mega Backdoor Roth	Post-Tax (No Deduction)	Completely Tax-Free

Bypassing Standard Income Restrictions

The standard backdoor Roth IRA is a well-known maneuver, but it fundamentally differs from the mega backdoor strategy in scale and execution. The standard version allows an individual to push roughly seven thousand dollars through a non-deductible Traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. This small maneuver helps build a tax-free balance over time, but it fails to move the needle for a specialized software developer or a medical specialist generating massive surplus cash flow each month. A high-earning household needs a much larger receptacle for their excess capital. The mega backdoor bypasses the tiny limits of the individual retirement account by using the institutional space of the workplace plan. The math proves absolutely staggering when executed correctly. If the overall limit is roughly seventy-three thousand dollars, and an employee maxes out their standard deferral at twenty-three thousand dollars, they have fifty thousand dollars of remaining legal space. If their employer provides a ten thousand dollar matching contribution, the gap narrows to forty thousand dollars. That remaining forty thousand dollars represents the exact amount the employee can siphon from their net pay directly into the after-tax bucket. Once the money successfully hits that bucket, IRS Notice 2014-54 explicitly permits the employee to isolate the after-tax basis and roll it directly into a Roth environment.

By executing this consistently, a high earner can pack away millions in Roth assets over a twenty-year career entirely legally. They circumvent the rules designed to keep wealthy individuals out of the Roth ecosystem. The standard Roth individual retirement account features incredibly strict income phase-outs. A married couple filing jointly earning over a specific threshold cannot legally contribute a single dollar directly to a standard Roth. Congress designed these income ceilings to prevent the affluent from hoarding tax-free wealth, reasoning that higher earners should pay taxes on their investment gains in standard brokerage accounts. The mega backdoor subverts this exact congressional intent. Because the Internal Revenue Service does not apply income limits to workplace defined contribution plans, your base salary is completely irrelevant to your eligibility for an after-tax 401(k) contribution. A chief executive officer earning five million dollars a year has the exact same legal right to fund an after-tax bucket as a junior marketing associate earning fifty thousand dollars. The structural loophole exists entirely within the employer plan documents rather than the individual tax code.

Diagnosing Your Corporate Plan Document

You cannot simply decide to start wiring excess capital to your recordkeeper based on mathematical theory. The specific rules governing your workplace 401(k) reside within a legally binding document called the Summary Plan Description. Corporate human resources departments hand these dense, unreadable PDF files out during employee onboarding. Most workers throw them directly into the digital trash. You must read it. The document dictates exactly what types of capital can enter the plan and exactly when that capital can leave. If the text lacks the specific legal phrasing, the entire mega backdoor framework dies on the vine.

Many legacy corporations actively refuse to offer these features. They claim managing separate accounting buckets complicates their payroll processing and increases their liability regarding nondiscrimination testing. Modern technology companies, specialized medical groups, and elite law firms offer these exact provisions as a standard retention tool to prevent their highest earners from jumping to competitors. Employees stuck in outdated plans frequently have to lobby their internal benefits committees to modernize the corporate architecture, presenting direct evidence that adding the feature costs the company nothing in actual cash outlays.

The Specific Language Required for In-Service Withdrawals

The Summary Plan Description must explicitly state that the plan accepts non-Roth after-tax contributions. This represents the first hurdle. The second hurdle proves much harder to clear. The plan must also explicitly permit in-service withdrawals or in-plan Roth conversions. Some plans happily allow you to dump after-tax money into the account but strictly refuse to let you move it until you leave employment or reach age fifty-nine and a half. This effectively traps your capital. The earnings will sit in the account and generate a rapidly expanding tax liability every single day you remain employed. You need a plan document that pairs the contribution allowance with an immediate exit valve. You must locate the exact section titled "In-Service Distributions" and verify the provisions exist in tandem.

If the plan allows external in-service withdrawals, you can physically pull the after-tax money out of the corporate structure while still actively employed and roll it into an external retail Roth IRA at Charles Schwab or Vanguard. External distributions offer massive advantages. Corporate plans usually restrict you to a tiny, curated menu of high-fee mutual funds. Moving the money to an external retail account opens up the universe of investable assets. Individual equities, exchange-traded funds, and zero-fee index products become instantly available to absorb your capital.

Custodial Infrastructure at Major Brokerages

Historically, executing this exact strategy required spending forty-five minutes on the phone with a customer service representative every single pay period. An employee would receive their paycheck, log into their portal to verify the after-tax deduction hit the account, and immediately dial the brokerage to request a manual in-service distribution. The representative would manually calculate the tiny pennies of interest generated over the past forty-eight hours, authorize the internal transfer, and generate a tax document. The extreme manual friction of this process caused thousands of participants to simply give up. Friction kills discipline.

Major institutional recordkeepers recognized this administrative nightmare and introduced automated in-plan Roth conversions to retain institutional assets. Fidelity Investments completely dominates this specific niche. Their NetBenefits portal features a dedicated toggle switch for daily in-plan conversions. An employee calls a representative exactly once to permanently activate the feature. From that exact moment forward, every single payroll deduction routed into the after-tax bucket automatically sweeps into the designated Roth bucket at the close of the trading day. The software completely removes human error. Zero days elapse. Zero taxable earnings accumulate. The pro-rata rule becomes entirely irrelevant because there are absolutely no pre-tax earnings to separate from the after-tax principal.

Brokerage Platform	Automated In-Plan Conversions	Administrative Friction
Fidelity NetBenefits	Fully Automated Daily Sweep	Extremely Low
Vanguard Institutional	Variable by Employer Contract	Moderate to High
Charles Schwab	Plan Dependent Web Portal	Moderate

Real-World Capital Allocation Trade-Offs

Allocating capital always involves deep opportunity cost. Pushing tens of thousands of dollars into a locked retirement account drastically reduces immediate liquidity. It limits discretionary spending and forces families to weigh competing financial priorities heavily against one another. Standard financial media suggests maxing out retirement accounts blindly, but real financial planning requires analyzing specific, mathematically dense trade-offs. Cash flow is finite. A dollar assigned to the mega backdoor cannot buy a primary residence, fund a child's education, or capture arbitrage opportunities in corporate stock plans.

Mega Backdoor Versus Superfunding a 529 Plan

Parents frequently misallocate capital based entirely on emotional anxiety regarding future college costs. Consider a middle-income family in Austin earning a combined one hundred and ninety thousand dollars. They debate redirecting fifteen thousand dollars a year from their retirement planning contributions to a 529 college savings plan. The desire to avoid forcing their teenager to take out high-interest Parent PLUS loans drives this specific decision. This emotional choice generally creates a tactical error. A 529 plan forces the capital into a highly restrictive use case. The money must pay for qualified education expenses. If the teenager secures a massive athletic scholarship, decides to join the military, or pursues an inexpensive trade school, the remaining 529 funds face a ten percent penalty on earnings upon non-qualified withdrawal.

By choosing the mega backdoor instead, the parents build a massive tax-free fortress. They can withdraw the Roth principal to pay for college if needed, or simply leave the funds to compound for their own early retirement if educational costs fall short of projections. The sheer versatility of Roth funds makes them exponentially more valuable than strictly earmarked educational dollars. You keep control of the money. A grandparent in Scottsdale deciding whether to superfund a newborn grandchild's 529 plan with a lump sum of eighty-five thousand dollars faces a similar dilemma. The alternative involves pushing that same capital through their remaining working years into their own Solo 401(k) mega backdoor setup. The grandparent should almost always select the Roth structure. The Roth carries absolutely no use-case restrictions and no required minimum distributions. If the child earns a scholarship, the 529 plan creates an administrative headache regarding non-qualified withdrawals and beneficiary transfers. The Roth simply continues compounding tax-free. When tuition bills arrive in eighteen years, the grandparent can withdraw the original basis or simply write a check directly from other assets directly to the university, avoiding gift tax reporting completely while retaining total legal control over the Roth capital.

Solo 401(k) Mechanics for Self-Employed Individuals

Corporate employees are not the only individuals who can execute this exact strategy. A guy running a two-chair barbershop in Sacramento can set up a customized Solo 401(k) with a third-party administrator that specifically allows for voluntary after-tax contributions. Most off-the-shelf individual plans from major retail brokerages strictly forbid these specific deposits. The barber must pay a boutique firm to draft a custom plan document. Once the legal framework exists, the barber can sweep his excess business revenue directly into the after-tax bucket and convert it to Roth. This completely bypasses the tiny limits of a standard individual retirement account. The administrative fees for a custom plan document run a few hundred dollars a year. The tax savings generated by sheltering forty thousand dollars of barbershop revenue annually run into the millions over a working lifetime. The math demands execution.

Capital Conflict Scenario	Standard Advice	Optimized Mega Backdoor Approach
College Savings (Parents)	Fund 529 Plan heavily	Fund Roth, withdraw basis if needed for tuition
Superfunding (Grandparents)	Lump sum into 529	Route funds to Solo 401(k) to retain legal control
Self-Employed Cash Surplus	Open standard SEP IRA	Draft custom Solo 401(k) with after-tax features

Cash Flow Matching with Employee Stock Purchase Plans

Technology workers face a very unique compensation structure. Base salaries often barely cover housing expenses in coastal cities. Their true wealth comes from Restricted Stock Units or Employee Stock Purchase Plans. An engineer receives massive equity grants that vest quarterly. The company withholds a substantial portion of the shares for taxes upon vesting, and the remainder deposits directly into a taxable brokerage account. The engineer cannot fund a Mega Backdoor Roth directly from these RSU grants. The IRS mandates that 401(k) contributions must originate strictly from W-2 payroll deductions. The engineer must employ cash flow matching to solve this mechanical limit.

A senior engineering manager in San Jose sets her standard payroll deduction to an aggressive seventy percent of her base salary. She directs thousands of dollars per paycheck into the after-tax 401(k). This drastically reduces her bi-weekly cash paycheck to a few hundred dollars. To pay her rent and buy groceries, she sells her vested RSUs immediately upon receipt. By selling the RSUs on the exact vesting date, she generates zero capital gains because the cost basis matches the sale price perfectly. She uses the cash from the stock sale to live on. This continuous loop effectively washes taxable corporate stock into tax-free Roth index funds. She remains cash-flow neutral but systematically shifts her entire net worth out of the taxable environment and directly into an untouchable tax shelter.

Constructing the Tax-Free Asset Allocation Engine

Once you secure the ability to push forty thousand dollars of fresh capital into a tax-free environment every year, standard asset allocation theories require serious, immediate adjustment. Most target-date funds force you to hold a predetermined, age-based mix of domestic equity, international equity, and fixed income within a single account structure. This ignores the mathematical reality of asset location. Asset location theory dictates that you place your highest-growth, least tax-efficient assets inside your most protective tax shelters. A supersized Roth account provides the ultimate tax shelter because neither the heavy dividend distributions nor the massive capital gains will ever appear on a federal tax return.

Placing low-yield municipal bonds or standard government treasury funds inside a mega backdoor portfolio wastes the structural advantage completely. You already pay zero taxes on municipal bond interest at the federal level when holding them in a standard taxable brokerage account. You gain absolutely nothing by putting them inside a Roth. You want assets that generate massive taxable events. You want assets that would otherwise drag down your after-tax return in a standard account due to high internal turnover rates, ordinary dividend distributions, or extreme price appreciation. You use the Roth wrapper strictly to hold the explosive engines of your wealth creation.

Equities That Absorb Tax-Free Growth

Broad market equities belong perfectly inside the Roth wrapper. A standard S&P 500 index fund doubles in value roughly every seven to ten years depending on specific market conditions. If you funnel thirty-five thousand dollars a year into this account, the capital base expands violently. In a taxable brokerage, selling these shares to rebalance triggers capital gains taxes. Rebalancing incurs massive friction. Inside the Roth shelter, you can sell completely out of a total market fund, pivot directly into small-cap value, and rebalance daily without reporting a single trade to the IRS. The government ignores the capital gains on a stock if it sits securely inside this specific IRA structure.

The compounding math becomes staggering when applied to high-beta sectors. Aggressive allocations to technology sector funds or specific factor products like the Avantis US Small Cap Value ETF benefit disproportionately from the Roth wrapper. These specific asset classes experience extreme volatility. Capturing the structural small-cap premium requires decades of patience. Rebalancing a taxable portfolio heavily weighted in small-cap value often requires selling winners and realizing massive short-term capital gains. Inside the Roth, you rebalance with complete impunity. You trade without tax friction. The federal government subsidizes your volatility by agreeing to take absolutely none of the upside.

Removing Fixed Income From the Roth Wrapper Entirely

You must completely break the target-date fund habit to optimize this strategy. Target-date funds automatically increase their bond holdings as you age. If you hold a 2035 target-date fund inside your mega backdoor account, you might be holding thirty percent bonds inside a tax-free vehicle. The bonds generate a small four percent yield, and you are using your most valuable tax shelter to protect that tiny yield from taxes. Meanwhile, your taxable brokerage account holds aggressive technology stocks generating fifteen percent returns, and you are paying heavy capital gains taxes on that massive growth. It is entirely backward. Break the portfolio down into its component parts. Manually route the fixed income allocation to your traditional pre-tax 401(k), effectively suppressing the future ordinary income tax bill on those withdrawals. Keep the mega backdoor reserved strictly for high-velocity assets.

Handling the Tax Drag on Earnings

Not all employer plans offer automated daily conversions. Some force you to call a representative manually once a quarter to execute the necessary conversion. During that three-month waiting period, your after-tax contributions sit in the market and generate earnings. These earnings create pure tax friction. When you finally convert the balance, you must pay taxes on the specific growth that occurred between the deposit date and the conversion date. If you deposited ten thousand dollars and it grew to ten thousand five hundred dollars, you owe ordinary income tax on the five hundred dollar gain for the specific year of the conversion.

Avoiding the Pro-Rata Trap with IRS Notice 2014-54

The pro-rata rule ruins standard backdoor Roth IRAs for anyone holding existing Traditional IRA balances. The IRS forces you to calculate the ratio of pre-tax to after-tax money across all your IRA accounts. You end up paying taxes on the vast majority of the conversion. The Mega Backdoor Roth entirely bypasses this specific Traditional IRA pro-rata trap as long as the money stays inside the 401(k) structure. 401(k) accounting rules operate on a strict sub-account level. The IRS allows participants to isolate the non-Roth after-tax sub-account within the 401(k) and convert exactly those funds without touching the pre-tax sub-account.

A decade ago, the IRS issued Notice 2014-54. This specific ruling changed exactly how you handle mixed balances during rollovers to external accounts. Before this notice, withdrawing funds from an account holding both after-tax contributions and pre-tax earnings forced a brutal pro-rata calculation. Notice 2014-54 allows you to cleanly split the distribution. You specifically instruct the recordkeeper to send the after-tax basis directly into a Roth IRA. Simultaneously, you instruct them to send the pre-tax earnings directly into a Traditional IRA. The basis converts cleanly with zero tax liability. The earnings roll over cleanly with zero tax liability until future withdrawal. You isolate the growth and neutralize the tax event entirely. This maneuver requires exact paperwork. Checking the wrong box on the physical distribution form triggers immediate taxation.

Analyzing Form 1099-R Box Codes Properly

You will receive a Form 1099-R from the recordkeeper detailing the rollover every spring. A code of G indicates a direct rollover. A code of H indicates a direct rollover of a designated Roth account distribution. Entering these codes correctly into tax software prevents the IRS from assessing false liabilities. If your form shows a code 1, the brokerage categorized your transfer as an early distribution with no known exception. This triggers immediate taxes and a ten percent penalty. You must audit your own tax documents relentlessly before submitting them. Relying entirely on commercial tax software to understand your split rollover frequently leads to massive estimated tax bills that require weeks of correspondence to correct.

Form 1099-R Box 7 Code	IRS Definition	Tax Return Consequence
Code G	Direct rollover to qualified plan or IRA	Non-taxable event (verify Box 2a is zero)
Code H	Direct rollover to a Roth IRA	Taxable strictly on the earnings portion
Code 1	Early distribution, no known exception	Subject to ordinary taxes and 10% penalty

Institutional Red Flags and IRS Compliance

The IRS requires 401(k) plans to undergo annual nondiscrimination testing. They mandate these checks to ensure the executive suite is not the only specific group benefiting from the retirement plan. These specific tests are called the Actual Deferral Percentage and Actual Contribution Percentage tests. The Mega Backdoor Roth frequently triggers massive alarms during Actual Contribution Percentage testing because only the highest earners possess the free cash flow to fund the after-tax bucket.

The Threat of Nondiscrimination Testing Failures

Highly Compensated Employees often find their after-tax contributions forcibly returned to them in the spring. The human resources department cuts a check, sends the money directly back, and hands the employee a tax form for the earnings. The entire strategy collapses for that specific tax year. The IRS defines a Highly Compensated Employee as someone earning over a specific threshold in the preceding year. If the non-highly compensated employees do not participate heavily in the after-tax portion of the 401(k), the plan fails the test. The average junior employee struggles to fund the basic deferral limit. They almost never make non-Roth after-tax contributions. Executives often plan their entire cash flow around this specific shelter, only to have their own plan administrator reverse the transaction.

Safe Harbor Provisions That Protect the Strategy

Companies circumvent these highly disruptive testing failures by adopting Safe Harbor plan designs. The employer agrees to make mandatory, fully vested matching contributions to all eligible employees. In exchange for this corporate expense, the IRS exempts the specific plan from standard testing. A common misunderstanding assumes Safe Harbor status automatically protects the after-tax bucket. It does not. Safe Harbor status protects the standard deferral limit. It provides zero protection for the after-tax bucket used in the Mega Backdoor Roth. Some aggressive plan administrators attempt to cap after-tax contributions at a very low percentage to mathematically guarantee the plan passes the test. A hard cap of three percent on a large salary severely limits the absolute dollar amount you can convert.

The Shifting Tax Environment and Future Risks

Tax loopholes exist entirely at the mercy of Congress. The Mega Backdoor Roth is not a specifically legislated benefit. It is a mathematical consequence of Section 415(c) limits and a 2014 IRS notice that clarified the rules around separating pre-tax and after-tax funds during rollovers. Lawmakers explicitly recognize the massive tax revenue lost to this specific strategy. High earners shelter billions of dollars annually using these specific mechanics to avoid capital gains taxes.

Shielding Assets Before Congressional Action

Recent legislative proposals attempted to aggressively terminate the practice entirely. Specific drafts of legislation aimed to ban the conversion of after-tax dollars in workplace plans and IRAs, effectively killing the strategy permanently. While those specific bills failed to clear the Senate floor, the text provides a clear roadmap for future tax reform. The target is painted squarely on this exact shelter. Relying on the indefinite existence of the Mega Backdoor is historically foolish. Tax law is subject to sudden, unceremonious revision. Current limits allow sheltering massive sums at this moment. A single rider attached to an omnibus spending bill could reduce that capacity to zero overnight. The threat of legislative closure dictates a strategy of maximum aggression. If the specific window is open today, filling the capacity completely makes mathematical sense before the legal rules change. Grandfather clauses historically protect capital already inside the Roth structure, shifting the urgency to immediate execution.

I read the internal revenue code updates the way some people read sports statistics. The sheer volume of capital that escapes federal taxation through this specific loophole forces a complete reevaluation of standard financial planning. We are conditioned to accept that taxes represent an unavoidable friction on wealth creation. Watching heavy cash flows compound in a completely sheltered environment proves otherwise. The tax code actively rewards those who read the dry, boring instructions. The gap between those who aggressively exploit IRS rules and those who passively fund standard target-date accounts widens every single payroll cycle. When I model out thirty years of compounded growth on an extra forty thousand dollars a year without a single dime of tax drag, the numbers look completely absurd. The advantage feels almost unfair.

I view taxable brokerage accounts with deep suspicion until all available tax-advantaged space is utterly exhausted. Prioritizing standard taxable investments before maximizing a defined contribution limit feels like financial self-sabotage. Making these decisions requires facing mathematical reality instead of emotional comfort. It feels safer to keep massive amounts of cash in a taxable brokerage where you can easily see it. Pushing fifty thousand dollars a year into a highly regulated corporate plan feels restrictive. The paperwork can be tedious. The phone calls to human resources departments to verify plan descriptions frequently cause intense frustration. The result is a mathematically superior portfolio completely immune to future capital gains tax hikes. The friction justifies the yield. You stop subsidizing the federal treasury and keep your own compound interest.

Disclaimer: The information provided in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, legal, or tax advice. The tax code is complex and subject to frequent legislative changes. Strategies such as the mega backdoor Roth involve specific legal requirements, potential penalties for improper execution, and complex tax reporting via Form 1099-R and Form 8606. You should consult with a qualified, licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) or a registered financial advisor before making any decisions regarding retirement accounts, tax planning, or major changes to your asset allocation. Any investment strategies discussed involve risk, including the potential loss of principal.