Recent content by SnowballCamper

HaHa... putting words in my mouth there. He also said he sees no real tax savings with a conversion. I merely illustrated how that is true when future tax rates are the same, and agreed with him. Its a wash... no need to get snarky.

But you have to pay the tax now, and don't get any growth on that, which makes it a wash... Convert 10,000 and pay tax with other funds: At 12% marginal rate this costs $1,200 and you have future growth of some %, say 8%, so after conversion and withdraw from the Roth you have spent $1,200 in...

OP it seems to me you're wanting to spend some money on a Florida home, and I would certainly consider it ok to draw down retirement funds before RMDs in order to make such a purchase. Since you're over 59.5 you can do this any way you want... and avoiding the next tax bracket is certainly...

OP is squarely in the 12% bracket and over 59.5. Did I miss something that puts the OP in a different tax bracket in the future... over ~30k more taxable income? What's the long term plan for the dollars being rolled into a Roth that makes it advantageous to convert? I think this is correct.

I got the cheapest cable modem in the local Best Buy store over five years ago. It still works fine. There is a periodic reset required... but I'm overall very satisfied for the price (about a year of Comcast rental modem). I did splurge on an AirPort Extreme, about 15 years ago, and it is...

Just buy from amazon.... then they'll do the checkout, and deliver it! ;-)

The detailed planning process is not so that you can execute the plan perfectly/precisely/ or even accurately. It is so that you have thought about what can happen before it actually happens, and can make a prudent decision, because you're not encountering the situation for the first time. You...

I just picked the survivor benefit out to highlight because, depending on the plan, it's one of those decisions that isn't easily undone, and your two careers are offset a bit. In the end it's about what the two of you want to do. Some people decline the survivor benefit and elect to spend the...

Welcome to SIRE (secure income retired early)! I'd suggest you have the conversation about the survivor benefit on the pension. FWIW DW and I are each beneficiaries on the other's pension. But we might be closer in age than your situation.

Here is a calculator that outputs the correlation matrix for a list of ticker symbols. https://www.portfoliovisualizer.com/asset-correlations I'm not sure how one would optimize... Although this would surely be useful to reduce the number of holdings to the few with the lowest correlation...

+1

I think you need to compare your marginal tax rate now (with SS coming as you have now) with what your marginal rate would be if you delay SS to age 70). Without doing this math, it's a pure guessing game, and you'll get every answer in the universe...

I think the big consideration is if the draw is from a taxable brokerage or an IRA that is taxed as regular income. It's probably prudent to consider capital gains taxes, but that doesn't matter on the IRA. It seems that there might be fewer transactions if you rebalance at the same time.

+1 to the idea of Enough.

So just wait until 2030 and the withdrawal rate will be up to 6.5%:dance: