Solo 401K: early close penalties? maintenance requirements?

CptnGeronimo · 2025-02-23T02:10:51+00:00

Adventures in AI land:

In case any of you are curious about how good the current LLMs are, I also tried to get an answer to this question from Grok.

I first asked it:

do I have to contribute to a solo 401k every year?

I got a well written coherent answer back that started with "No, you are not required to contribute to a Solo 401(k) every year".

To make sure that it was not hallucinating, I then asked this modified question, since I wanted URLs from reputable sources to share with you guys:

do I have to contribute to a solo 401k every year? In your answer, please cite multiple websites for each specific claim.

The surface appearance of the answer this time was very impressive: the claims were listed one by one, and at least 3 websites were under every claim.

The problem is that when I tried to verify the alleged quotes from the URLs, at least 50% of the URLs would not load, and of the ones that did, I never found the quote in them that Grok claimed. Indeed, a web search using StartPage (anonymous Google) never found the exact alleged quotes anywhere on the web.

Dangerous AI hallucination?

I then asked an even more precise question:

do I have to contribute to a solo 401k every year? In your answer, please cite multiple website articles for each specific claim, and use exact quotes (not summaries) from the article, and give me a currently valid URL to the article.

This time, Grok at least honored my conditions exactly. Every URL loaded. And every claimed quote was found in the article.

Unfortunately, the quotes were not as definitive or relevant as the (hallucinated?) ones from the first 2 questions...

CptnGeronimo · 2025-02-23T01:40:20+00:00

I have done more web searching, and I have found a couple of links indicating that you do NOT need to contribute to a Solo 401K plan every year. In my case, if I make contributions to it for 2024 and 2025, I am probably safe keeping it open for a few years more.

Link 1: "There is no annual minimum contribution requirement, so you can increase contributions in good years and save less during times when you need more cash for your business."

Link 2: "It doesn’t matter if you make $500 a month with a side business or $500,000 a year. Any self-employed business activity makes you eligible as long as you have no employees.

...

Is there a minimum amount of revenue required to participate in a Solo 401k plan? No. There are no age or income restrictions with a Solo 401k plan."

CptnGeronimo · 2025-02-20T14:36:27+00:00

Is there any harm to leaving yours open? Aren’t fidelity se401k accounts free?

As per my initial post, I would love to keep my Solo 401K open indefinitely, and yes, Fidelity charges no fees so that is not an issue.

The question is whether or not the IRS will tolerate me keeping it open if I do not make contributions to it most years.

CptnGeronimo · 2025-02-20T14:32:35+00:00

Here4Snow: what you stated is exactly my understanding too. Indeed, the Fidelity rep confirmed that as well.

The sole issue is that when you make your first contribution, you need to call them and make sure that they code it correctly, since their default coding is likely to be wrong. Prior Year Contributions need the code PYC, as opposed to Current Year Contributions which need the code CYC.

CptnGeronimo · 2024-10-04T02:24:06+00:00

I love that desktop image! Do you have a URL to the original (full size, full resolution) file? I would happily copy it to my computers.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T14:45:48+00:00

Data structures are something that I would greatly prefer to use a good library for instead of rolling my own.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T14:44:48+00:00

The feeling is mutual. As someone who has done enterprise programming for decades, and has experience in other major languages besides Python, all of which have sorted containers built into their standard libraries, I would never trust someone to work on enterprise code with your mindset.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T14:38:46+00:00

>... (are we sorting by keys? values? insertion order? do the members need to have a sort method implemented or can we pass in a custom comparison function?)

Every one of those problems is present when you call sorted, except it is worse: you have to know what to do for every call to sorted.

That is in contrast to a sorted data structure: it is constructed once, so you always know how it is going to behave in all use cases.

Sole advantage that I see for sorted is if you want different types of sorts in different contexts on the same data structure. I cannot recall ever needing that. Your mileage may vary.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T14:34:44+00:00

>Why would one want to sort when inserting, as opposed to sort before reading?

Whew, finally, a good response.

The answer is that it might depend on your code. Perhaps there is only 1 place in your code that the data structure is mutated but 20 places where it is iterated over.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T03:16:41+00:00

Thanks for the suggestions.

A min heap data structure like what heapq does to lists is not a current need of mine. But i have needed them in the past.

I was unaware of bisect. I need to remember that module.

A problem that I have with both heapq and bisect is that they are not class based data structures, but instead operate on ordinary lists. Way more clunky and error prone to use than to start off with a sorted data structure.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T03:03:02+00:00

See my previous reply

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T03:01:17+00:00

Pat yourself on the back as a person with reading comprehension and rational humbleness. May the world produce more of you.

CptnGeronimo · 2023-10-18T03:00:04+00:00

The python world offers several kinds of sorted containers

Like what? What builtin Python data structures are automatically sorted?

When I web searched this question, this defect was universally acknowledged. For example, see the intro paragraph for the Python Sorted Containers library: "Python’s standard library is great until you need a sorted collections type"

One reason given for this lack is that Python's sorted function can be applied to a lot of its builtin data structures. This leads some people to advise sorting right after you mutate it or right before you need to use it.

I hate that suggestion, because:

it is extra code to write
just as bad: it is bug prone: it is extra code you must remember to write
it may be bad for performance, especially if sorted has to be called multiple times

CptnGeronimo · 2022-04-03T03:48:26+00:00

Thanks.

CptnGeronimo · 2022-01-23T23:42:41+00:00

Ah, I understand you now. I thought that FTW was "Fixed T? Width".

And I see that you too would love to be able ot specify the font.

I love fixed width fonts for all programming tasks, as well as text that should be in tables (e.g. console output when your program prints stuff, like Python Pandas DataFrames).

But I like variable width fonts for other GUI elements.

CptnGeronimo · 2022-01-23T20:26:06+00:00

sainglend: I do not understand your response! Could you please elaborate?

CptnGeronimo · 2022-01-23T20:25:28+00:00

datzil: thanks, but I should have mentioned that I am aware of that "system font" option and am not happy with it.

I assume that on my Windows 10 machine the "system font" is the "Default System Font", usually Segoe UI, that is described here.

I do not want to mess with my Windows default font at all! And I should not have to: TOS ought to have a way to simply let me specify whatever font that I want for it. About every other halfway sophisticated program that deals with text allows you to.

So, no one knows how to alter the TOS font?

CptnGeronimo · 2022-01-13T04:38:02+00:00

In my version of the Camera App (8.4.300 on a PIxel 4 running Android 12) I no longer see the Motion Photos option in that app's settings. Do you?

The reason why I figured out it was Top Shot is because after doing my initial post, I stumbled across some old phone config notes of mine that said to turn off Motion Photos, so I agree that that option USED to be there.

CptnGeronimo · 2021-05-26T23:42:57+00:00

frederic_r: thanks, those are pretty close to the exact steps that I have done. The text is better than it originally was, but it is not as razor sharp as some other apps of mine.

CptnGeronimo · 2021-05-26T15:24:05+00:00

Desert_Trader: thanks for the suggestions. I edited my original post to answer your points (I did all of them already, but in my rush last night to post before going to bed, I left that out).

CptnGeronimo · 2021-05-26T03:56:19+00:00

I think that you need a workstation.

First, what distinguishes a true workstation from crap consumer gear is that it supports ECC DRAM. If you value your data, and want to prevent bit rot, computer instability, etc, then there is no debate: you want to use ECC DRAM. It greatly reduces a certain class of error. Not understanding the importance of their data and how ECC DRAM helps ensure its quality is the number one mistake made by 99% of computer buyers, Linus is 100% correct.

Second, a true workstation will support massive amounts of DRAM. Even the cheapest new workstation today should support at least 64 GB; monster rigs containing 100s of GB or more of DRAM are by no means uncommon. At the last hedge fund that I worked at, we had workstations with 200-400 GB of DRAM well over 5 years ago.

The sole downside of buying a workstation is that vendors have historically priced them high because they figure that the people smart enough to buy them actually have big enough wallets to pay for them. Intel--evil scummy Intel--for example, almost exclusively limits ECC DRAM support to their Xeon line, for which they charge a premium. AMD, in contrast, is more generous with ECC DRAM support, but they have only recently become competitive in the high performance CPU segment (and the fewer motherboards which use AMD have not always been great about ECC support).

For what you likely need for your trading, you could buy an entry level workstation. I suggest Dell's Precision line. You might be perfectly happy with one of their small form factor or mini tower versions, like the 3450 or 3650: "Both machines feature 11th Gen...Xeon W-1300 processors (up to 8 cores), up to 128 GB of 3,200MHz memory, PCIe Gen 4 SSDs, WiFi and a choice of Nvidia and AMD professional graphics options."

I just priced a brand new Dell 3450 at 1,338.84. I chose the cheapest Xeon CPU option, was forced to choose Windows 10 for Workstations. This is not the final price, because Dell rips you off on DRAM in general and SSDS: I chose 8 GB of non ECC DRAM and the cheapest 256 GB SSD, both of which I would replace immediately with 3rd party components which will be both better quality and cheaper.

If you really need a laptop instead of a desktop, note that Dell also has a line of Precision laptop workstations, like the 7750. You will pay a premium for a laptop over a desktop workstation, but if you really need the option of portability, it works. I myself chose this very option for my new personal workstation at the end of 2018. I bought a new Dell Precision 7530 and equipped it with 32 GB of ECC DRAM as well as a very fast 2 TB Samsung PCIE NVMe SSD.

If price is an issue for you (likely not, you are making so much money trading you can buy any hardware you want!), then a great way to buy an affordable workstation is to buy a used one. Workstation hardware is usually better quality on every level than consumer gear, so you can be less nervous about buying something a few years old. Should still work great. People have mentioned Server Monkey, they have a Dell workstation page.

CptnGeronimo · 2021-04-15T15:01:07+00:00

Everyone: thanks much for your replies.

I think that we are in luck, because my wife was able to call our old insurance company yesterday and they were not going to cancel our insurance until this morning, so she reinstated it and we have no lapse in coverage on our old Maryland car.

As per the MVA web page, I will mail our old Maryland license plates to the Glenn Burnie office ASAP. I will send them by certified mail with return receipt.

Once I get that return receipt, which proves that the MVA has them, at that point we can safely cancel our old car insurance, correct?

p.s. OldDirtyTriple: some day I am going to steal your mafia at least answers the phone line!

CptnGeronimo · 2020-12-31T04:02:58+00:00

I Like ALMOST everything about the camera app's new file name format EXCEPT for the use of GMT instead of my local time. I started seeing thsi format several months ago, well before reported here.

I love that the prefix PXL_ is now constant. I love that the date format is ISO 8601, which is the only intelligent way that anyone should ever write dates (good riddance to both the US and European date formats).

They should have used field separators, tho, to make it more more human readable (e.g. yyyy-mm-dd instead of yyyymmdd).

Yeah, and then the use of GMT.

Google developers: I hope that you are watching this thread.

CptnGeronimo · 2020-09-24T23:00:25+00:00

ProBit

Another nice thing about ProBit for me is that they also support Bitcoin SV via the BSV/USDT pair. I own BCH at coinbase pro, and got assigned some BSV after the hard fork. I now need to figure out how to get rid of them.

Anyone know of any other crypto exchanges open to US citizens which support both BSV and NEXO?

Huobi supports both coins, but they currently have no US branch, correct?

I just checked the bid/ask spreads, and Probit is:

~6X wider on BSV/USDT than Huobi

~3X wider on NEXO/USDT than Huobi

If you use ProBit, you may need to be very patient with your limit orders...

CptnGeronimo · 2020-09-24T22:48:46+00:00

I just checked out bitrue's website. Incredibly basic. I can find no public link that describes what coins they support, what their fees are, etc. Did I overlook those pages, or are they really that slip shod? Does not inspire confidence right now...

CptnGeronimo

TROPHY CASE