I Can't Frontload My 401k and a Dating App Update

 I've been waiting all week for Friday to get here. I wanted to see my last paycheck posted and I was excited for some of the money moves I was hoping to implement on Saturday, Jan 1.

The one I was most excited about was frontloading my 401k to get through that last FIRE hurdle as quickly as possible. But we all know Temperance is my theme for 2022 and boy did it give me a gentle nudge.

While clicking around my 401k plan I discovered that 50% is the max you can contribute per pay period! I'm already at 37%, so that would be about $700 more per pay period. Not quite the dramatic effect I was going for. 

Ughhhhh.

It's a great "problem" to have but not the dramatic 1st quarter effect I was going for. So I'll just be keeping this last leg of this FIRE journey extended for 3 months instead of 2. It just got way less exciting. I don't even really want to change my contributions at this point. 

It would just be fun to say I contributed 100% of my paycheck to my 401k. I wanted to punctuate the moments in this final leg. 

And now I actually have to consider my Bonus which I like to pretend doesn't exist so that I don't pin any hopes and dreams to it. I have to consider it because it adds to that elective limit of about $20k/year. While our company does have spillover, I'm not sure how that works with the bonus. Would it stop the full bonus match? Would it stop the full amount from being taken out of my paycheck?

I'm starting to lose track of why I wanted to do this. I think the main benefit was just this mad dash to the next FIRE milestone and trying to not have any taxes taken out.  But alas, I'm thwarted!

Right now, I think Plan B is just to keep the contributions the same and do 50% of Bonus. That should pretty much max out my 401k and cut down on tax liability I presume. 

I don't know. I have to think on it some more. With not being able to reduce my tax liability as in my original plan, does it matter if the funds are in my savings account or invested from a milestone perspective? 

This is information I just discovered, so I have to process it some more. I think the earliest I could call the race to FIRE is end of March 2022 as opposed to end of Feb 2022.  I think I was just holding my breath. 2 months seemed okay, but 3 seems impossible. I wanted to do something splashy, but alas, slow and steady seems to be the way forward.

In other news.

I deleted MERJ's Hinge profile last night a little before 9p. I feel no regrets. There is a part of me, woefully, that still thinks I'm going to meet someone really soon. I don't know. The more I try to let go of the notion, the more it just feels like it might be my destiny. It's going to be someone really great and I feel like it's someone I've already met. So I don't know. For whatever reason, I don't think my dating story is over and I think it's for the better (as opposed to the absolute worse). This is rare. So we shall see.

I'm still hanging on to Catfish Kate's profile. I responded to Dapple last night at 3a. I don't know what I'm doing anymore. I was thinking I'd delete it by 9a, but now I'm thinking 12n. But I surely don't want to wait until 9p. That's just ludicrous.

I feel sad that it didn't work out between him and MERJ but it's always good to get confirmation that there's nothing else you could've done. I just wasn't the standard of beauty. Nothing I can do about that. 

I do feel like an idiot for sending a lame picture. But in the end even my best picture wasn't going to make me the standard of beauty. He's offered to call Kate twice and she's turned him down. I tried to video chat him twice and was ignored. Enough said.