The Study.
Your conversations with your CFO leave something behind. The Study is where it lives.
Where the work stays
Most financial advice evaporates. It is said once, half remembered, and gone by the time it matters. The Study holds your work: a memo you kept from a conversation in September, a model that recomputes itself every time you open it and a plan you can export and hand to any advisor.
Anything your CFO says, kept
Arm the highlighter, select any passage in a conversation, and choose what happens to it. Correct a fact and your CFO remembers. Append it to a file you are already building. Or start a new memo from it. The selection carries over as written, tables and all.
Workbooks hold figures that refresh when you open them.
Memos hold prose and tables that stay as written.
Overall across all three connected brokerage accounts you're up +$233,418 (+14%) on a cost basis of about $1.66M. The Individual Brokerage carries +$167,418 of that on its own. The two retirement accounts are where I would look instead: $372,000 in the Rollover IRA sits against $238,000 in the Roth. The split matters more than either balance does.
Your retirement is 61% pre-tax: $372,000 in the Rollover IRA against $238,000 of Roth. The first is taxed at withdrawal at whatever your rate is then. Your $26,500 of after-tax room is income you have already paid 35% on, so converting it promptly to Roth costs nothing more and everything it earns after that is yours.
Elena has the plan document question queued for Thursday. The memo in The Study has the full sequence.
Vysaro provides insights only. Not financial, legal, or tax advice.
Illustrative preview · sample data, no personal information
Your CFO builds workbooks, you keep memos
You create memos by keeping what your CFO says. Your CFO builds workbooks when you ask it to model something, because only it can produce figures that recompute. A memo becomes a workbook the moment live figures land in it, and the card changes itself. Green for workbooks, navy for memos, so you know which is which before you open anything.
Workbooks hold figures that refresh when you open them.
Memos hold prose and tables that stay as written.
A memo stays exactly as written
Prose, tables, whatever you captured, unchanged from the day you kept it. That is the point of a memo: it is a record, not a calculation. A plan written in September still reads the way it read in September, and it exports to PDF or Word when your accountant wants a copy.
Mega Backdoor Roth Plan & Action Items
This memo captures everything from our September 2026 conversation about maximizing after-tax Roth contributions through your Solo 401(k).
What we confirmedYour current Schwab Individual 401(k) adoption agreement explicitly blocks both ingredients required for the mega backdoor Roth:
- After-tax (non-Roth) employee contributions: NOT ALLOWED
- In-plan Roth Rollover conversions: NOT PERMITTED
This is not a Schwab policy issue. It is baked into your specific adoption agreement. The plan document itself defines these features, but your adoption agreement never elected them. The mega backdoor Roth is simply unavailable at Schwab under your current plan.
What the Mega Backdoor Roth isBeyond the standard $23,500 elective deferral limit, a properly structured Solo 401(k) allows you to make after-tax (non-Roth) employee contributions up to the IRS annual additions limit of $70,000 total across all contribution types. You then immediately convert those after-tax dollars to Roth inside the plan, tax-free on the principal, with only any small earnings taxable. The result is Roth dollars at a scale ($20K to $46K+ annually) that a standard Roth IRA ($7,000/year) can never match.
Given your $372,000 pre-tax retirement concentration against a $238,000 Roth balance, this is the single most impactful structural move available to you on the retirement side.
YOUR 2026 CONTRIBUTION MATH (approximate)
Based on 2025 net Schedule C income of about $103K:
- Elective deferral (Roth): $23,500
- Employer profit sharing (pre-tax, about 20% of net SE income): about $20,000
- Total used toward $70K ceiling: about $43,500
- Remaining after-tax contribution room: about $26,500
- That $26,500 converts to Roth immediately, tax-free on principal
Note: Employer profit sharing is always pre-tax. It does NOT flow through the mega backdoor. Only after-tax non-Roth employee contributions do.
No separate Roth IRA neededThe Roth bucket lives inside the Solo 401(k) as a sub-account. The flow is:
After-tax contribution → Solo 401(k) after-tax sub-account Immediate in-plan conversion → Roth sub-account (same plan)Everything stays within the plan wrapper. No external Roth IRA required.
STEP 1: Call Fidelity and confirm plan document language
Ask specifically: 'Does your Self-Employed 401(k) plan document allow after-tax non-Roth employee contributions AND in-plan Roth conversions?'
Get this confirmed verbally and ask them to email the plan document or adoption agreement for your records before proceeding. Fidelity's standard self-employed 401(k) does support both, but confirm it in writing before initiating any transfer.
STEP 2: Open the Fidelity Solo 401(k)
Once confirmed, open the account online or by phone. Takes 1 to 2 business days to establish. Use your Thornbury Consulting LLC EIN, the same entity as your current plan.
STEP 3: Initiate plan-to-plan transfer from Schwab
This is a direct plan-to-plan transfer, NOT a rollover to an IRA. Fidelity will handle most of the paperwork. They have a dedicated transfer team for incoming Solo 401(k) plans. Your $254K moves intact with no tax event. Typical timeline: 4 to 8 weeks from initiation to completion. Target initiating this no later than mid-October to clear before the December 31st contribution deadline.
STEP 4: Coordinate with Elena (CPA) on timing and contribution amounts
Elena has this queued as a question already and needs to confirm:
- Exact net SE income for 2026 (to size the employer profit sharing correctly)
- Whether to max elective deferrals as Roth or pre-tax given your 2026 income picture
- Estimated after-tax contribution room for 2026 given the above
- Whether a late 2026 transfer still qualifies contributions for the 2026 plan year
STEP 5: Make after-tax contributions once plan is active
Once the Fidelity plan is live and funded, contribute after-tax non-Roth dollars up to your remaining room (about $26,500 estimated for 2026 based on 2025 income). Do this before December 31st.
STEP 6: Convert after-tax contributions to Roth immediately
Fidelity allows in-plan Roth conversions online. Convert the after-tax balance to the Roth sub-account as soon as it clears. The faster you convert, the smaller the taxable earnings component. Pay any tax on earnings from outside the plan. Do not withhold from the converted amount.
STEP 7: Repeat annually
Each year going forward: contribute after-tax, convert to Roth, done. This is now a permanent part of your annual retirement strategy, not a one-time move.
Deadlines to watch- October: Initiate Schwab-to-Fidelity transfer (leaves buffer for 4 to 8 week processing)
- December 31, 2026: Contribution deadline for 2026 plan year
- Tax filing deadline (April 2027 or October 2027 with extension): Employer profit sharing contribution can be made up to this date even if the plan is established by Dec 31
- Elena (CPA): Confirm Schwab plan is blocked, coordinate Fidelity transfer timing, size 2026 contributions correctly
- This memo should be shared with Elena at your next meeting as a briefing document
A workbook recomputes every time you open it
Open a workbook and its figures refresh against today’s balances before you see them. Every row is derived, so a schedule cannot fall out of step with the assumptions above it. Freeze it when you want a moment held still, and export the whole model to Excel when you want to work it yourself.
Reserve Drawdown Updated Payments + $1K Prepay
This schedule models how long your $75,000 reserve lasts given the updated monthly payment on 1214 Ridgeway Drive plus $1,000/month additional principal prepayment.
Assumptions:- Opening reserve: $75,000
- 1214 Ridgeway monthly payment: $4,180 + $1,000 prepay = $5,180/mo
- Monthly draw: $5,180/mo
- Reserve yield: 3.34% (compounding monthly)
- Start: September 2026
Result: Reserve exhausts in November 2027, covering 14.80 periods. Final partial draw of $4,140.71 with a $1,039.29 shortfall. Total interest earned: $1,660.71.
The $1,000 prepayment is the part of this you choose. Dropping it takes the monthly draw to $4,180 and stretches the reserve to 18.43 periods, roughly three and a half months further than the schedule above. That is the real trade: the prepayment buys principal reduction on 1214 Ridgeway and it costs you those three and a half months of runway. The reserve carries you into late 2027 either way.
Shortfall: $1,039.29 · Total drawn: $76,660.71 · Total interest: $1,660.71 · Periods covered: 14.80 periods · Exhausts in period: period 15 · Final partial draw: $4,140.71
Keep the work.
Advice that evaporates was never advice. This is where yours stays.