How to Get $100M+ In Your RRSP (or Roth IRA)

I think most people would be extremely happy if they end up with six figures in their retirement accounts.

Most of the people reading this are different, of course. You’re overachievers, the personal finance equivalents of the keeners shooting their hand up every time the teacher asks a question. You sicken me.

Average results aren’t good enough for this group, which mostly just reflects how poor a normal person’s retirement accounts really are. If it wasn’t for employer-matched contributions and CPP, most folks would barely have two nickels to rub together. Y’all are different, and I’m happy we get to hang out. Still, would it kill you to get off my lawn?

Some of you have already done all the heavy lifting and have $1M+ in your retirement accounts. Others are younger and on pace for multiple millions, especially when you throw in many decades of tax free growth in TFSAs and excellent stocks (like the ones profiled here).

A few million bucks by the time you retire is nice. That’ll put you squarely in the top 5%, maybe even in the top 1%. That’s great. But what about being in the top 0.01%? Or 0.001%? To do that, I’d reckon you’d need a nine figure RRSP. Maybe even ten figures.

Oh, it’s been done. Let’s take a look at a few famous members of the eight or nine-figure retirement account club and see what we can learn from these outlandishly large accounts.

Ted Weschler

I tweeted about this last week and it got gobs of attention, so let’s start with Ted Weschler.

Every $1 invested at the age of 22 turned into $9,000. That’s just ridiculous. No wonder Buffett hired the guy.

It turns out I didn’t give Weschler enough credit. Because after he penned this letter he turned that $131M into $264M by 2018. It could easily be worth $400M by now. Or more.

Laughingly, he chalked up his success to…

Oh Ted. Honey. No. You cannot say shit like that.

Ted was smart about this. As soon as the story leaked he was all over it, talking to whatever journalist wanted to ask about it. He offered few details, except saying he invested in “only publicly available securities.” See, everyone. The only thing separating you from nine figures in your IRA is not turning over enough rocks.

So we don’t know exactly how Weschler got to nine figures. By design, obviously. Smart folks on the internet have speculated he got there by participating in a special preferred share during W.R. Grace’s bankruptcy organization back in the early 00s. These securities were, technically, available to the public, but they were also part of a complex procedure most folks reading have no hope of understanding. And we’re kind of the creme de la creme of investors here.

There’s also the potential he put a big chunks of his IRA in Dillard’s, a footwear company that he first disclosed a position in back in 2020. This was a personal investment that did extremely well, but Weschler made the majority of his IRA gains before this investment.

Peter Thiel

Ah, Peter Thiel. The most infamous venture capitalist in Silicon Valley reportedly had $5B+ in his Roth IRA in 2018. It’s a good thing too, since he’s clearly a vampire. That money is going to need to last for a long time.

I won’t spend much time on Thiel’s story because, frankly, it’s not that interesting. He was able to buy a special class of shares in Paypal back in 1999 at 0.1 cents per share because he’s the ultimate insider. Regular folks don’t even get a sniff at things like this. There’s a tiny chance we can use Weschler’s strategy in our own retirement accounts. There’s no chance we can copy Thiel’s methods.

Plus, and I cannot stress this enough, he is 100% a vampire.

Michael Decter

Michael Decter was formerly a civil servant in Manitoba and Ontario, rising up to eventually become Ontario’s deputy minister of health. He started a second career in the investment industry in the late-1990s, teaming up with Jack Lawrence to start LDIC Investment Management.

Decter wrote a book around the same time that outlined his investment process, Million Dollar Strategy. In it he claimed to use shrewd investing to grow his RRSP from $50,000 to seven figures, a pretty impressive number 25 years ago. As of 2013 the value of his RRSP was speculated to be in the $10M+ range, and could easily be worth $20-$30M today.

Million Dollar Strategy is part biography and part how-to guide, filled with actionable, albeit pretty simple tips, like:

• Hone and test your investment strategies while still young

• Look for investments “right under your nose”

• Set objectives

• Monitor your investments

• Trust yourself

I have not read the book, although it does sound intriguing enough. It has been put on my to-read list.

Like a lot of these stories, Decter’s is heavy on inspiration and short on details. Which is a shame, but even if we did get a blow-by-blow analysis it would be impossible to duplicate anyway.

You likely haven’t heard of Michael Decter, but you may be familiar with his daughter, Genevieve Roch-Decter. She managed a fund for her dad’s firm before trying her hand at being a Twitter influencer/newsletter provider.

Seymour Schulich

Seymour Schulich is Canadian investing royalty, although he does stay under the radar a little bit because he’s primarily stuck to the resource sector during his illustrious career.

After a long stint Beutel, Goodman, and Co., a pension manager, he and a partner set out on their own in the 1980s, essentially inventing the royalty streaming business model that is so prevalent in the mining sector today. Their companies were Euro-Nevada and Franco-Nevada, the latter which is still around today.

The last time I remember coming across Schulich was in 2019 when he went “all-in” on Pengrowth Energy through his holding company, Nevada Capital Corp. This did not end well, with Pengrowth essentially rescued from a potential bankruptcy by Cona Resources.

In 2013, The Globe and Mail did a piece on huge RRSPs, speculating he had a $250M RRSP. When he was told of his RRSP’s reported value, he said:

It’s pretty obvious how Schulich accumulated such a large RRSP, even if the value was exaggerated. He put large amounts of capital into those two fledging royalty companies, which then did exceptionally well.

Finally, a lesson we can use. Just put all your capital into a revolutionary financing scheme that will change a sector forever and you too can have a nine figure RRSP. Not sure I’d recommend that too loudly, but hey. It worked pretty well for Schulich.

Some guy on Reddit

How much do I believe the next person? I dunno, but I promised to turn over every rock I could.

Further on in the comments he discloses he went all-in on a certain crypto stock and it did extremely well. He held for about a year and then was looking to sell on a day when the stock was down ~25% to lock in his gain.

This is probably the most realistic way to get yourself a $1M TFSA. A 10-bagger or 15-bagger is pretty rare, but they certainly exist. It’s not outside of the realm of possibility to get that kind of return in some super-risky asset like crypto.

I’ve also heard stories of folks doing incredibly well riding up marijuana stocks during that sector’s glory days. A $50,000 investment in Canopy Growth Corp back in 2016 was up to approximately $1M just two years later, assuming you sold at the top.

The $1.25M day trader

In 2015 The Financial Post ran a story about a day trader who had accumulated $1.25M in his TFSA back in 2015. Even a mere double from then would put this TFSA in the $2.5-$3M range.

The secret to such a large balance, according to John, the investor in question, is to invest big amounts in risky penny stocks and warrants. Investments made included 33,000 shares at 30 cents each of a stock called TerraX Minerals. He sold for 39 cents the very next day. He also bought 500,000 shares of Ashburton Ventures for eight cents each, selling shortly after for 19 cents.

The only problem with such a strategy? Such short-term trading might not be officially banned in a TFSA, but the feds are pretty clear. They don’t want you doing it. The CRA was officially auditing John when the article was written, and although no one has heard what happened it wasn’t looking good for him. The CRA had recently slapped him with penalties for doing the same thing in his RRSP.

And that’s about it, kids

There aren’t very many of these stories, and it’s easy to see why.

It really comes down to two things:

1. You don’t want the average person knowing just how big your retirement accounts are. People get mad about stuff like that.

2. You don’t want the CRA (or IRS) to catch on, especially if you’re doing some frisky stuff in the account

As for how to get these huge amounts in your retirement accounts, the details are even fewer. The easier route is to be a Wall Street insider and get access to the kinds of opportunities normal investors don’t get. Most of us will never be in that position, so we’re forced to do risky stuff like going all-in on weed, crypto, or whatever the stock du jour is.

Ultimately, for us mere mortals, that’s the kind of strategy that needs a lot of luck to be successful. Luck isn’t the best of investment strategies, so I’m going to stick with my boring blue chips.