Virginia Man Turns $70,000 Into $264 Million Roth IRA Buying Only Public Stocks. He Won’t Owe Another Penny of Tax. The Same Rules Apply To You

A Virginia investor named Ted Weschler turned $70,385 in 1989 into $264 million by year-end 2018, and he did it buying nothing but ordinary public stocks inside a retirement account any American can open. No pre-IPO shares. No insider allocations. Just picks anyone with a brokerage login could have made. Because the account is now a Roth IRA, every future dollar of growth, and every qualified withdrawal, is permanently shielded from federal income tax. The same rules apply to your account.

How a $22,000-a-Year Analyst Built a Nine-Figure Retirement Account

Weschler started contributing to a retirement account in 1984 at age 22, earning $22,000 a year as a financial analyst. Five years later, with the balance at $70,385, he moved the funds into a Self-Directed IRA, which let him pick individual public stocks instead of a fixed menu of mutual funds. From there, he compounded for three decades using only publicly traded securities, no private placements, no founder shares. That distinction matters. When ProPublica published its 2021 investigation into mega-IRAs, Peter Thiel’s Roth appeared alongside Weschler’s, but Thiel’s fortune was built on early, non-public PayPal shares that drew scrutiny over valuation and access. Weschler built his balance entirely from publicly available stocks. He eventually caught Warren Buffett’s attention by winning Buffett’s charity lunch auction twice, and now runs money as a senior investment deputy at Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE:BRK.B | BRK.B Price Prediction) alongside Buffett and Charlie Munger.

The $28 Million Check That Bought Lifetime Tax-Free Status

Here is the real mechanics behind the “won’t owe another penny of tax” framing. In 2012, with the account worth $131 million, Weschler converted it from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA and paid more than $28 million in taxes on the conversion. That was a real, immediate check written to the IRS at ordinary income rates. What the payment bought was permanent: once the money is inside a Roth, all future growth and all qualified withdrawals come out federal-income-tax-free. The account has since more than doubled again, and none of that appreciation is taxable. The mechanism is the same conversion move available to any traditional IRA holder who is willing to eat the tax bill up front.

The Same Rules That Applied to Weschler Apply to You

For 2026, the Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,500, up from $7,000 in 2025, with a $1,100 catch-up for savers age 50 and older, for a total possible $8,600 per year. Direct contributions phase out between $153,000 and $168,000 of MAGI for single and head-of-household filers, and between $242,000 and $252,000 for married couples filing jointly. You fund the account with after-tax dollars. In exchange, qualified withdrawals after age 59½ (once the account has been open at least five years) come out entirely tax-free, including every dollar of investment growth. There are no Required Minimum Distributions during the original owner’s lifetime, unlike traditional IRAs and 401(k)s that force withdrawals around age 73. A Roth can compound untouched and untaxed for as long as you live. Compare that to a 1.7% national average 12-month CD, where every dollar of interest is taxable each year, or a 10-year Treasury yielding 4.6% that pays interest into a fully taxable account.

What to Actually Do

Weschler’s structural choice, a Self-Directed IRA, is available to any ordinary investor through a specialized custodian. It lets you pick individual public stocks instead of a preset fund menu. If your income sits above the 2026 phase-out, the backdoor Roth remains legal: contribute to a traditional IRA, then convert. The one trap is the pro-rata rule, which can create unexpected tax if you already hold other traditional IRA balances, so plan the sequence carefully. The other lever Weschler pulled costs nothing: he started at age 22. Roth contributions made in your twenties get thirty-plus years of tax-free compounding that no amount of catch-up saving in your fifties can replicate.

One more feature worth knowing: Roth IRAs are favorable to heirs. Since 2020, most non-spouse beneficiaries must withdraw the full inherited balance within 10 years, but there is no annual RMD during that window, and withdrawals remain tax-free if the original account met the five-year rule. A beneficiary who inherits $400,000 in a Roth IRA and leaves it untouched for nine years before withdrawing it all in year 10 pays zero federal income tax on the full amount. Weschler’s balance is extreme, but the tax treatment is ordinary. The same rules apply, dollar for dollar, to your account.

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