Always max your retirement fund

This should go without saying. But if you are serious about investing then you should always max out your retirement contributions every year. The amount of money you save on income tax should then be turned around and invested also, I like to use this as my "mad money". At the end of the year when I do my taxes, whatever money I get back for my retirement contributions instantly becomes money I can fool around with. I use this to invest in high risk stocks that look like they may make a jump, if I loose it, not big deal as it would have ended up in the governments pocket anyways.