Executive Summary
Certain college athletes now earn meaningful self-employment income from third-party name, image and likeness (NIL) activities. When that income qualifies as earned income for retirement-plan purposes, a Solo 401(k) may create substantially more retirement contribution capacity than an IRA alone.
This paper illustrates one potential use of that capacity: making Roth contributions early in an athlete's earning life and allowing those retirement assets to compound over a very long time horizon. The value of the concept is not the headline future-dollar number. It is the combination of qualifying earned income, contribution capacity, tax treatment and time.