Warren Buffett's deputy grew his retirement account from $70,000 to $264 million in under 30 years. He explained how to save a fortune, and why shrugging off losses is key.

His retirement fund grew from $70,000 to $264 million in less than 30 years.

Ted Weschler, who helps manage the investment portfolio of Warren Buffet, talked about his approach with a columnist. The size of Weschler's nest egg was revealed by ProPublica in June 2021.

In a perfect world, nobody would know about this account, but Weschler hoped the revelation would encourage people to save and invest early in their careers.

The investor opened hisIRA in 1984. He was a junior financial analyst at the company and made $22,000 a year. He maximized his contributions and took advantage of the generous employer match to grow his account to over $70,000 by the end of 1989

After-fee, compounded annual returns of 22% for its clients were delivered by Weschler's hedge fund. He joined the company after spending $5 million to attend the charity lunch with Warren Buffet.

Despite his IRA losing half of its value in 1990, the investor's retirement fund grew in value by more than 300,000%. Weschler focused on learning from the lost money.

He said that there's no such thing as a loss, it's just an unmonetized lesson.

Weschler paid over $28 million in federal income tax for converting his IRA into aRoth IRA. He will not have to pay taxes when he cashes out his retirement account.

Goldman Sachs shares a "consistently profitable" stock options strategy that takes advantage of earnings and company analyst days.

There was no longer an overlap between the investments he analyzed for work and those he would buy for his account, which led to the deputy paying less attention to his nest egg. He's looking for companies that can absorb at least $500 million without giving up a stake of 10% or more, which means he's focused on businesses with a market cap of over $5 billion.

Weschler said the value of index funds for people who don't have time or interest in studying investments was similar to that of Buffet. He said that if he had parked his savings in the S&P 500 index fund at the end of 1989 it would have been worth over a million dollars by the end of 2021.

"That $1.6 million drives some very simple advice: start early, maximize the employer match, invest 100% in equities, and ignore all the other noise," Weschler said.