Should I Front-Load My 401(k) or Contribute Throughout the Year?
Ramsey Everyday Millionaires
Ramsey Network
4.6 • 3.6K Ratings
🗓️ 9 March 2026
⏱️ 7 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | This episode is brought to you by SmartVestor. |
| 0:07.0 | Connect with an investing pro near you at Ramsey Solutions.com slash SmartVester. |
| 0:12.0 | Rick's in Las Vegas. Hey, Rick, how are you? |
| 0:16.0 | Hey, Dave. Hey, Rachel. Thanks for taking my call today. I appreciate it. |
| 0:19.0 | Sure. How can we help? |
| 0:20.0 | So I have a 401K question for you. I'm just trying to plan for next year. |
| 0:24.6 | I max on my 401k every single year, not only as an individual, but from the company contributions as well. |
| 0:32.5 | This year it was $23,500 for individual and I think $46,000 from the company, so $70,000 total. My question is, |
| 0:41.3 | next year I'm debating on whether I want to front load at all by February. We get a huge |
| 0:48.2 | profit sharing check every single year and I max it out in February. Is it better to do that, or is it better to spread it out throughout the year? |
| 0:57.8 | We have taught in our world dollar cost averaging for so long that people sometimes avoid the lump sum. |
| 1:04.3 | And that's kind of what brings your question to bear. |
| 1:07.7 | So what I do is I fully fund mine in the first month of the year. |
| 1:14.7 | Okay. |
| 1:15.0 | And the reason is this. |
| 1:16.7 | Okay. |
| 1:16.9 | The only reason you would spread it out throughout the year is if emotionally you can't |
| 1:22.4 | handle the stock market going up and down and you're going to freak out. |
| 1:26.9 | But that doesn't bother me a bit because I don't even look at it. I just put it in there and I'm thinking I'm probably never going to touch it. I'm probably putting it in there for Rachel's kids because I'm not probably going to use that money anyway. But the, um, and Denise and Daniels kids. But anyway, it's not just Rachel's kids, but the, uh, Rachel's kids are like, who hoo, yeah. Papa Dave. But anyway, it's not just Rachel's kids, but the Rachel's kids are like, |
| 1:52.5 | woo-hoo, yeah. Papa Dave. Yeah. But anyway, the, yeah, so the point being that mathematically, |
| 2:00.6 | even if the market goes down right after you put it in, by the end of the year it will have gone up more than it went down |
| 2:02.8 | 90% of the time. |
... |
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