You still have oodles of time to max out your 2025 retirement plan contributions. But procrastinating can cost you—a lot.

While investors typically spread 401(k) pretax contributions throughout the year and many wait until the deadline to sock money into their IRAs, there can be significant benefits to front-loading your investments after a big market drop. The S&P 500 () is down 6.5% for the year.

“A market downturn is your best friend. If you make your contributions now, your money is positioned to get a boost from a market recovery,” says Marianela Collado, a senior wealth advisor at Tobias Financial Advisors. “That’s how you can enhance growth.”

The maximum IRA contribution for this year is $7,000, or $8,000 if you are 50 or older. The deadline for making a 2025 contribution is April 15 of next year.

For 401(k)s, the maximum pretax contribution for this year is $23,500 if you are under age 50, $31,000 if you are 50 or older, and $34,750 if you are aged 60 to 63. Folks aged 64 and older have a $31,000 limit. Contributions for 2025 must be made by year end.

As long as you can afford to live on a smaller paycheck up front, you can arrange with your 401(k) provider to have significantly more withheld from your paycheck to accelerate hitting the maximum contribution earlier in the year.

“Right now, I’m putting away 50% of my paycheck,” says George Fraser, senior partner at Benefit Commerce Group. “If the tuna fish normally sells for $2.48 and now it’s on sale for 50 cents, what should you do? Stock up. And that’s exactly what you can do in the market.”

But before you change your 401(k) contribution schedule, be sure to check with your plan provider to ensure you will still receive any employer match if you front-load your contributions, Collado says.

While front-loading usually won’t jeopardize your ability to receive matching contributions, she says, “I’ve seen plans where they won’t do the match based on the contribution you made for the full year. It has to be on a per paycheck basis. So be careful. Every 401(k) has its own quirky rules.”

Even in years with a steadily rising market, it can make sense to make your contributions early in the year so your money has more time to capture potential tax-favored growth.

Extra months of compounding growth makes a big difference over time.

Consider two investors who make lump sum 2025 IRA contributions of $7,000 and earn a 6% average annual return. One investor contributes at the beginning of each year, while the other waits until April of the following year, and they continue investing the same amount at the same time for 30 years.

According to Vanguard, after 20 years the January investor would have $278,200 and the April investor, $258,700. And after 30 years, there would be more than a $40,000 difference: $595,200 versus $553,400, with the early bird getting more worms, according to Vanguard.

Be careful not to turn front-loading into trying to time the market, says Matt McGrath, a managing partner at Evensky & Katz/Foldes.

If you start trying to guess when will be the best time to plow money into your accounts, you would be better off systematically investing every week, month, or quarter.

“It’s more important to keep making your contributions consistently over time than it is trying to time entry points,” McGrath says.

Market timing is usually a losing game, resulting in investors sitting on the sidelines during recoveries.

The point of front-loading retirement contributions isn’t to play a guessing game—it’s to position your money for more time to grow and to participate in a market recovery.

Could the market go down further? Of course, Fraser says. “Who the heck knows what will happen tomorrow? All we know is what’s happening now, and when the tuna fish is on sale, you buy more of it if you can afford to do so.”