Money coach maxes their Roth IRA at the beginning of every year: It's 'non-negotiable for me'

It’s only February, and Charly Stoever has already made a sizeable portion of their investments for the year.

At the beginning of each year, Stoever, the founder of Traveler Charly Money Coaching, makes the maximum contribution to a Roth individual retirement account, meaning they hit the $7,500 limit for 2026 back in January.

“A lot of people think that it’s better to drag out investing for retirement throughout the year and do what’s called dollar-cost averaging,” Stoever says, referring to a strategy of investing a set amount of money at regular intervals. “But for me, it just works better to front-load and max out my individual retirement account the first week of January in order to capture the entire year’s worth of gains.”

Stoever’s business has never made more than about $60,000 in a year, and, after taxes and expenses, the financial coach pays themselves even less. According to Stoever, that means their Roth investment is roughly 25% of their annual income.

“But if I don’t do that, I will not retire. So I’m willing to bite the bullet and just front-load my investments,” they say.